Mary Wollstonecraft's Rights For Women

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman laid her arguments for the rights of education for women in the 18th Century, portraying the world of women in her time and how they were treated by the world. Since the time of Mary Wollstonecraft to the present day, women are still struggling in many parts of the world for the right for education. Wollstonecraft argued that education can reform the life of women, shape her home and world. Education has changed the life of women from being dependent to independent but the culture and tradition, and the mindset of people still restraints women from their right to education while subjecting them to inferior sex, domestic violence and gender discrimination. Hilary Clinton, Sonia Gandhi,…show more content…
Even today, women as stated by Wollstonecraft are “not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name virtue (Ch. II, Pg. 24, para. 1).” Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl was shot in her head by Taliban in 2012 when she stood for her right to education. In Pakistan, women are at the bottom rung of the education ladder because the culture of Pakistan assumes that women are limited within the four walls of home while men earn the bread for the families (Noureen and Awan, 2011). It is the same prevailing notion in many societies. People think it is just a culture and tradition they are trying to preserve but actually it reinforces the notion of superior and inferior complex of society in the name of culture and tradition. The world still expects women to be educated but at the same time restricts them to the traditional role as stated by Wollstonecraft that “they do to-day what they did yesterday, merely because they did it yesterday (ch.II, Pg. 29, para. 15).” Thus preventing women from enrolling into education or even early dropout from school compares to men as for woman continues to focus more on family and tradition rather than education. Education in today’s world is still same in some ways, especially when it comes to changing the world as education does little in changing/ breaking “age-old” culture and tradition of society…show more content…
These cultural and traditional values of community restrict the mindset of every individual to think against it. The girls in the society grow by observing and witness their mothers going through same treatment of domestic violence and unknowingly adapt to that kind of system and expect the same fate for themselves (Ovais, 2014). Women even after being highly educated, they will still be bonded by their husbands, cultures and social norms. Malala Yousafzai celebrated her 18th birthday with opening of the Malala Fund’s “Malala Yousafzai All-Girls School” near the Syrian border to provide quality secondary education to girls (Malala Fund, 2015). This shows that women are still fighting around the world for their rights to education. Even today, Wollstonecraft’s argument for right to education for women is relevant as women are still fighting for their equal stand with men though education cannot bring the changes in the society and mindset till they shape it
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