Women's Rights During The Enlightenment

Women’s Rights
When women are often perceived they are thought of as a complicated, uneducated, person who should only stay inside the home to prepare dinner and take care of the children, at least in the 17th century. Now women are fighting for equal rights just as their counterparts and while they are still complicated and well-educated people it was not always this way women have been fighting this same fight for countless centuries before this time trying to be known as being just as important as their male acquaintances. The first time equality between men and women was thought of was in the 18th century during the enlightenment period.
During the Enlightenment people spent their time reading and trying to educate themselves even more.

With this they bought multiple books with different types of story lines. By doing this people became well rounded and educated in different subjects, even with feminism. Enlightenment writers like Denis Diderot, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Astell, Madame du Chatelet, Mary Wollstonecraft, Marquis de Condorcet, and Madame Condorcet they wrote books based on women’s rights and women’s education. They made their issue of average women being educated. In The Enlightenment: and Why It Still Matters by Anthony Pagden, Pagden includes a quote that Diderot stated in Diderot Encyclopedia that he wrote during the Enlightenment “We have so severely neglected the education of women among all of the refined peoples, that it is surprising that we can identify so many whose erudition and written words have made them renowned. M. Chretien Wolf has provided a catalog of celebrated women, followed by fragments of classic Greek prose texts. He was elsewhere published the fragmentary poems of Sappho, and the elegies that she received. The Romans, the Jews and all of the literate peoples of Europe have had brilliant women.” Concepts like these were included in books during the Enlightenment period to make others aware of the difficulties women were facing daily. Many of these writers were opinionated and thought to be “before their time.”
In this day and period the common lesson schoolteachers give students about the Enlightenment period just talk about the enlightenment thinkers and the students learn about the Enlightenment and they barely hear anything about the women and men who took part in writing books or any of their accomplishments in trying to better women and help them be at the same levels as their husbands or male acquaintances.

It almost makes it look as if women were not part of the enlightenment as a whole. When women were thought of men and other pupils considered them having a designated role in their society, by being mothers and wives for their families. Mostly because that’s how they made people think of them as. For example women participated in a salon culture which was very popular during the Enlightenment period. A salon was a social and intellectual gathering of people who would meet at the house of a well-known or intellectually inspirational person to discuss the latest cultural trends, from literature to politics, from art to philosophy. Salons were meant to be a social gathering for fun and entertainment as well as sources of intellectual

stimulation.
In this day and time women can get any job they want as long as they have the education and the requirements the job requires. But during the Enlightenment the only jobs available was spinning cloth, tailoreses, milliners, dyers, shoemakers, embroiderers, washerwoman, food preparation such as brewers, bakers, or confectioners, or they sold food on the streets. Another common job was a domestic servant and other women were midwives and apothecaries. As you can see the thought of a woman being a doctor or a lawyer were way out of reach women did not even think of going to school to study under that profession because they knew when they got out to the real world men would not take them serious and they could not make money from being hired for that position. So instead of going to school to learn a profession like their husbands would they took jobs that required little to no school or educational degree. Meaning that women received a minimum wage or got paid under the table which would never be enough to help support their families. So of course the men and some women found it completely unnecessary to have both the wife and the husband working when the husband could easily support his family with the money he received with his “real profession” meaning a doctor or a lawyer. But thankful some men and women believed that women were made to be better then how they were. By them becoming educated and getting actual jobs instead of these simple task jobs which barely paid the minimum wage. What was the purpose of having a job as a women if you could spend the amount of time on the job cleaning your house and caring for both your husband and your children.
Thankfully women are powerful creatures that never give up and even thought they are confusing they seem to know a lot more than they did during the Enlightenment.

The first time equality between men and women was thought of was in the 18th century during the enlightenment period. If women were to quit the battle of equality imagine how the world would be today. Would we still have all boy schools and girls having to stay at home because they were not allowed to or was not a women’s thing to do. Or would the United States be almost like a third world country were women were not allowed to go to school because they needed to take care of the home and watch their siblings if they were young or if they were older their children? All of these are valid questions but thankful we never have to know the answer because of Denis Diderot, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Astell, Madame du Chatelet, Mary Wollstonecraft, Marquis de Condorcet, and Madame Condorcet women today owe them the entire

world.