1759 – 1797
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English Enlightenment philosopher and early feminist theorist whose work challenged prevailing assumptions about women's intellectual and moral capacities. Her landmark treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) argued that women's apparent inferiority stemmed from systemic denial of education rather than natural deficiency. She is widely regarded as a foundational figure in Western feminist philosophy.
Authored A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the foundational text of Western feminist philosophy
Argued that women's rational and moral capacities are equal to men's, requiring only equal education to develop
Critiqued Rousseau's idealization of female docility in Émile as morally and socially harmful
Authored A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), defending Enlightenment liberal principles against Burke's conservatism
Established the structural critique that social conditions, not nature, produce gendered intellectual differences