The Equality of the Genders: A Comparison of Works by Emma Watson and Mary Wollstonecraft For all of history, women have often been considered largely inferior to men. This makes the subject of women’s rights a difficult one to express adequately. Emma Watson and Mary Wollstonecraft address the topic of gender equality throughout their works and deign to answer a question women have been asking for centuries: why are women considered less capable than men and what can humanity do to change that? Watson’s speech, “Gender Equality is Your Issue Too,” addresses the world and people of all genders as a representative of her country in the United Nations. She considers both the underestimation of women and the less addressed, but just as important, subject of how gender stereotypes affect men. The primary goal of Watson’s speech is to obligate men and women to pay attention to the inequalities in the world around them, and to do their part in seeing through the persistent prejudice, especially involving gender equality, that plague…show more content… Her intention is more to identify with the anger and frustration of her female readers, as well as shake any possible male readers into realising exactly how difficult navigating societal customs can be for a woman. In one passage, Wollstonecraft compares women to inexperienced soldiers, maneuvering around the absence of information concerning the proper etiquette and virtues of their purposes. “Women are told from their infancy...that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man.” (Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, ch. 2), she states, intending to conduct the message of frustration at being conditioned to act inferior to her audience, a task she accomplishes quite well using