green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand this idea
| 21006 | If women share rights with men, they will exhibit similar virtues |
| Full Idea: Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify that authority that chains such a weak being to her duty. | |||
| From: Mary Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of Women [1792], p.294), quoted by Amartya Sen - The Idea of Justice 18 'Wrath' | |||
| A reaction: Presumably this implies that if emancipation led to women exceeding men in such virtues, there would be some justification for imposing the chains on the men rather than the women. Consider wars. Probably best to just abandon chains. |