Vindicación de los derechos de la mujer

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Érika Gómez López (Editor), Maximiliano Garzón Mesa (Translator)

Publicado en 1792 por Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindicación de los derechos de la mujer es una obra pionera del feminismo que defiende la igualdad entre hombres y mujeres, argumentando que la educación es la clave para lograrla. Wollstonecraft critica la visión tradicional de la mujer como un ser subordinado y dependiente del hombre, sostenida por filósofos como Rousseau, quienes afirmaban que las mujeres debían ser educadas solo para agradar y servir a los hombres.

La autora sostiene que la falta de educación impide a las mujeres desarrollar su razón y potencial, perpetuando su opresión. Argumenta que tanto hombres como mujeres poseen la misma capacidad intelectual y moral, y que solo a través de la educación pueden las mujeres convertirse en ciudadanas independientes y responsables. Wollstonecraft también denuncia el matrimonio como una institución que, en su época, limitaba la libertad femenina y exigía sumisión.

Con un estilo apasionado y lógico, el libro desafió las normas sociales de su tiempo y sentó las bases del pensamiento feminista moderno. Su legado sigue vigente, pues cuestiona los roles de género impuestos y aboga por una sociedad más equitativa basada en la razón y la justicia.

292 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2025

About the author

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.

During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.


After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org