Who Counts? De Gouges, Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Women

The revolutionary declarations spoke of the 'rights of man', and some women asked why they were left out. In 1791 the French playwright Olympe de Gouges published a Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, rewriting the 1789 text article by article to include women; she noted that if a woman could mount the scaffold, she should also be able to mount the speaker's platform.

In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft in England published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing that women appeared inferior only because they were denied education. Most revolutionaries rejected these claims: in 1793 the Convention banned women's political clubs, and de Gouges was executed for her political writings. Supporters at the time were few, and many argued that women belonged in the home.

Yet these works became foundational texts, showing how the logic of universal rights could be turned against exclusions built into the very documents that proclaimed it.