Mary Wollstonecraft was right: once education opened to women, they proved themselves equal to men.
And Susan B. Anthony was right: men are not prepared to live in a gender equal world.
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“A growing chorus of experts are saying with urgency, when it comes to boys and school, for the good of the boys and the good of the nation, something needs to be done — now.” - Meghna Chakrabarti
This is a quote from the On Point podcast discussing the growing educational gap between boys and girls.
“Something is going on with America’s boys. In every single U.S. state, men are less likely than women to earn a bachelor’s degree. But that educational achievement gap begins much, much earlier. By the time they’re just 8 years old, boys are nearly half a grade behind girls.”
Every time I hear about the crisis of boys falling behind academically, I can’t help but think of Mary Wollstonecraft—the 18th century philosopher who prophesied that once women were allowed an education they would prove to be equal to men.1
In fact, I’d say at least once a week I think about this exchange between Jean Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Jean Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss philosopher whose radical ideas on equality directly influenced the French revolution, the U.S. Constitution and modern democracy.
He was a big deal.
That whole “all men are created equal” thing? JJ’s idea.
And when he said, “No man has any natural authority over his fellow men,” he really meant men. Women not included. He strongly believed that men did have natural authority over women.
In 1762 he wrote a book called Émile where he said that humans are a lot like animals—we all just be wanting to have sex all the time. (I’m paraphrasing). But God in his mercy decided to distinguish humans from animals by giving men reason and brains to curb their sexual desires and by giving women modesty and subservience to curb theirs.2
Therefore it naturally follows that men should be educated in all things to strengthen their reasoning brains and women should be educated only on how to please men.
“Thus the whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown, to council them, to console them, and to make life agreeable and sweet to them—these are the duties of women at all times, and should be taught them from their infancy.” - JJ
By divine design, men are smarter and better than women. God made women dumber and worse for a reason.
“One should be strong and active, the other weak and passive; one must necessarily have both the power and the will, it is sufficient for the other to offer little resistance. This principle being established, it follows that woman was specifically made to please man.”
“She remains inferior to us.” -JJ3
Mary Wollstonecraft had some thoughts about the natural inferiority of women
Mary Wollstonecraft was an anomaly for her time. While her peers were settling down to marriage and children, she anonymously published books intellectually sparring with all the leading intellectuals of her time- Thomas Paine, John Locke and of course Jean Jacques Rousseau.
In 1790, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men critiquing hereditary privilege, aristocracy and The Church of England. Everyone assumed a man wrote it, and it was spread and discussed widely.
Fourteen months later, in 1791, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women with her own female name right on the title page.
And all hell broke loose.
People could not believe a woman wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men. They were embarrassed to have taken a woman’s words seriously. She was quickly condemned and criticized for being immoral, immodest, untrustworthy and hysterical. Horace Walpole called her “a hyena in petticoats.”4
Still, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a woman because she had something to say to Mr. Jean Jacques Rousseau and his ideas on the natural inferiority of women.
She said, you know what JJ, you may be right that women aren’t as sharp as men, sure they act like “spaniels” and “toys,” but that isn’t nature or God, that’s how we train women to be.
She said, oh women aren’t as smart as men? Maybe that’s because we deny women an education.
“If women are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education.”
“Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex… Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.” -MW
She said, oh women are vain, coquettish and only care about beauty? Maybe that’s because we cut women off from all other power, so her sole avenue to safety, money, status and power is through attracting a man.
“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”5
She said, oh women are subservient? Maybe maybe that’s because you literally force us into submission.6
“The consequences are uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from such polluted sources, private misery, and public servitude.”
She said, allow women an equal education to men and let’s see how dumb, inferior or obedient they are then.
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.”
Mary Wollstonecraft prophesied in 1792 that the “natural inferiority” of women would evaporate as soon as they were allowed the same educational opportunities as men.
And well well well, 233 years later and what have we here?
It’s 2025 and after hundreds of years of being denied equal education and opportunities, women finally do have equal educational and career opportunities to men and what has happened?
Girls are 14% more likely to be school-ready at age five compared to boys.
By 8th grade, girls are almost a full grade ahead of boys.
Among the top 10% of students ranked by GPA, two-thirds of them are girls.
In every single U.S. state, men are less likely than women to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Women now earn 63% of master’s degrees and 56% of doctoral degrees.
Um, can we just pause for a minute to throw some flowers on Wollstonecraft’s grave?
In a time when both men and women truly believed women were too dumb to vote, too emotional to lead and too naturally inferior to think reasonably, Wollstonecraft freaking called it.
She saw through the conditioning of her time and published her thoughts with no empirical evidence. Even when she was called a crazy, deranged hyena.
*Round of applause for Mary and her vindicated Vindication.
And what has been the response to everyone being so wrong about women’s capabilities?
Rousseau was far from the only one saying that women biologically are just not meant for education:
William Withers Moore, the president of the British Medical Association wrote in 1886 that educating women was dangerous to their reproductive systems and “they would succumb to the disorder ‘anorexia scholastica’ —becoming sexless.”
Dr. Edward H. Clarke, a Harvard professor in his book Sex in Education said, “A woman’s health must suffer if she studies too much. The brain cannot develop and be educated without injury to the reproductive organs.”
In 2005, the President of Harvard Larry Summers7 said the reason that there were fewer women in STEM wasn’t because of discrimination or socialization, but because of a variability in “intrinsic aptitude.”
Girls were not fully admitted into most Ivy League colleges with boys until the 1970s. Dartmouth in 1972, Harvard in 1977, and Columbia not until 1983! The reason? They would have to “lower their standards” to admit women. Which is especially ironic considering that girls have been out-ranking boys in school for 100 years.
And we’ve been wrong in our assumptions about women’s aptitude in so much more than just education. At different points in the last century and a half, it was widely believed that women were naturally unable to:
Vote. Sir Almroth Edward Wright, a doctor and immunologist, wrote The Unexpurgated Case Against Women’s Suffrage in 1913 saying “The woman’s nervous system is more excitable, her vital force more easily exhausted, and her physical endurance less than that of man. These facts make her unfit for the continuous strain and excitement of political life.”
Work in the medical field. An issue of the Journal of American Medical Association published in the late 1800s claimed that a woman’s nature simply could not handle the field of medicine stating, “Women’s nerves are too fragile to practice medicine.”
Speak in public. in 1869, an Oxford professor claimed that “Women are naturally incapable of the sustained intellectual effort needed for oratory, as their nerves are too delicate to endure the strain of public speech.”
Lead… anything. In 1970, a member of the US Democratic Party Committee on National Priorities, Dr. Edgar Berman declared that all women are unfit for leadership due to their “raging hormonal imbalances.” Just imagine he said, a female bank president needing to issue loans on her period!!
Go to space. Women were initially barred from the space program because it was inadvisable to have such “temperamental psycho-physiologic humans” on board a spacecraft.
As we’ve learned our assumptions were so very wrong, surely there has been some admittance of wrong-doing for barring women from equality so unnecessarily?
Surely there has been some apology and collective reckoning for withholding education and opportunities from women for centuries under such incorrect assumptions?
Surely all those journals and colleges producing books and articles saying “Sorry men have to rule everything because women are intellectually inferior.” Surely they have come out and said, “Whoops! We were wrong! Turns out women are intellectually equal to men!”
Surely there has been some cheerleading as we watch the systemically oppressed underdog pull ahead?
You would think so, wouldn’t you?
But you would be wrong.
Instead, the response to girls and women equaling and then surpassing boys and men in education has been, “AHHHH!!!!! DISASTER!! CRISIS!! SCHOOL IS TOO GIRLY!!! QUICK! MAKE IT EASIER FOR THE BOYS!!!! GET MORE MALE TEACHERS!! Boys like recess and sports- QUICK MORE RECESS AND SPORTS!!!!
WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE BOYS?!?!?!?!?”8
To quote the On Point podcast from the beginning of this article:
“A growing chorus of experts are saying with urgency, when it comes to boys and school, for the good of the boys and the good of the nation, something needs to be done — now.” -Meghna Chakrabarti
In that same podcast, Richard Reeves says, “It’s taken policy makers too long to wake up to the need to act with real urgency on this issue of boys in school.”
Too long to act with real urgency??
Too long?!?!
In the US girls were legally barred from formal schooling for 200+ years. In Europe, much longer. In many parts of the world, girls are still not able to go to school. For most of human history worldwide, education was illegal for girls and women.
Boys fell behind girls in college graduation rates less than 30 years ago.
And let’s be clear- it is not illegal for boys and men to be educated.
“Disenfranchisement means inability to make, shape or control one’s own circumstances.” - Susan B Anthony.
Women were disenfranchised. They were unable to obtain an education, land ownership, business loans, credit cards and most paid occupations for most of this country’s existence. Far longer for black women.
We are reacting as if men are now disenfranchised from education.
But they are not.
Pew Research recently surveyed boys and girls and asked them directly why they aren’t going to college. And what did the boys say? Because it’s illegal? Because they are discriminated against? No. They said, “because I don’t want to.”
“Among adults, men are more likely than women to cite factors that reflect personal choices to not attend college or complete their degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, about a third (34%) of men without a bachelor’s degree say a major reason they didn’t finish college is that they just didn’t want to. Only one-in-four women said the same.” - Forbes
Another feminist from over a century ago accurately predicted how men would respond to women gaining equality
I was pondering this very predicament of why boys are falling behind when this TikTok from Alexandria came across my feed about Susan B. Anthony and I thought, “whooooa, nailed it.”
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“Susan B. Anthony who is both problematic and iconic— predicted what would be your greatest dating struggle 200 years ago…
Before she died, Susan B. Anthony made sure to say that a world was coming in which her daughters, our daughters would be prepared and ready to lead, to live, to have liberty, but the men, our sons, our brothers would not be prepared to reckon and live in that world... because of a mismatch in entitlement.” - Alexandria
130 years ago, Susan B Anthony correctly saw how privilege was affecting men and how it would continue to affect them:
“Look at the boys of this generation. Before the boy’s head reaches the level of the table, he learns that he is one of the superior class… His mother teaches him all the requisites for success in after life. She says: ‘My son, you must not chew, nor smoke, nor gamble, nor swear, nor be a libertine; you must be a good man.’ …. Now, what does the boy say when he looks up to his mother? He says, ‘O, nonsense! mother, you don’t know what you are talking about; you’re only a woman.’” - Susan B. Anthony
We now live in that world where women are prepared for equality, but the men are not.
While girls and women’s socialization has changed from being told they should be at the bottom to being told they should be equal; boys and men are still socialized to believe they should be at the top, and are therefore not ready to reckon with a gender equal world.
The moment society stopped rigging education against women, Mary Wollstonecraft was right, women proved to be men’s equal.
And the moment women gained equality, Susan B. Anthony was right, men proved to not be prepared to live in that world.
Women’s equality is called a crisis and attempts are made to rig the system back in men’s favor.
It’s hard not to laugh at the irony- after centuries of excluding girls from formal education, we finally let them in, only to panic when they excel.
Privilege is the problem. It can’t be the solution.
In speaking about the difficulties of school Richard Reeves said, “The girls survive it better… the girls just seem a little bit better at doing the work even when it seems pointless and boring.”
Why would that be?
Why would girls be better at showing resilience when faced with hard, pointless or boring things?
Sociologist Dr. Shante describes the conundrum perfectly:
“When you build systems of hierarchy and privilege, privilege is actually what weakens you.
The privilege makes you weak because when you socialize an entire group of people to believe ‘I exist, therefore I deserve,’… ‘I exist, therefore the path should be laid out very cleanly ahead of me where I don’t have to work hard and I don’t have to struggle.’…
Meanwhile you are socializing all other groups to survive with less resources and less privilege. As a result they become adaptable, resilient, creative, resourceful. They are developing the muscle for survival that they subsequently turn into systems for success and prosperity.
Meanwhile the privileged group is not developing these systems. And when they start to see the disenfranchised group becoming stronger, gaining opportunities, building systems of success, rather than say ‘hey maybe we ought to be doing that too,’ instead, privilege doubles down.
Privilege digs into the well of anger and grievance and says, ‘you are the reason why I can’t be successful. You are taking opportunities from me… So now rather than develop the muscle of resilience, I’m going to start taking privileges away from you… in hopes that you will get back to where I think you out to be which is underneath me…
The very system that you designed to uplift yourself is actually the one that is putting you far behind because you never develop the muscle, the work ethic, the resilience, the innovation and the creativity as the disenfranchised group.
You can’t socialize one group for survival and another group for ease and expect them to develop the same skills.”9
This nails why girls and women are pulling ahead- not because they naturally have bigger brains, but because they’ve been socialized for resilience instead of ease.
Boys and men are falling behind not because the are less capable, but because they are socialized to believe they naturally should be ahead.
Privilege breeds fragility. Ease breeds entitlement. The privilege is the problem.
Which is why it is unendingly frustrating to watch men like Richard Reeves and Scott Galloway be given the mic again and again and again as the chief experts on the topic of boys falling behind in school because their answer is never to address patriarchy, entitlement or privilege.
Rather, their solution is to grant boys MORE privilege: make school easier for boys, manipulate the system to cater more to boys and their preferences.10
I believe that it is hard to be a boy. I’m all for helping the boys. I’m concerned about the male loneliness epidemic. I care about boys and men falling behind.
But the solution to privilege is not more privilege. The solution to patriarchy is not more patriarchy.
You can’t expect to weed a garden when you refuse to dig up the roots.
Also mother to Frankenstein author Mary Shelley.
“The Supreme Being has deigned to do honor to the human race: in giving man unlimited desires, at the same time he provided the law that regulates them so he could be free and self-controlled; and while delivering him to these immoderate passions he added reason in order to govern them. In endowing woman with unlimited desires he added modesty in order to restrain them.” - JJ
And if you disagree, well, you’re wrong. Reason says so. Nature says so. God says so:
“When woman complains about the unjust inequalities placed on her by man she is wrong; this inequality is by no means a human institution or at least it is not the work of prejudice but of reason.” -JJ
The 1790s version of “QUIET PIGGY.”
“We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality.” - MW
“Rousseau declares, that a woman should never, for a moment feel herself independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise her NATURAL cunning, and made a coquetish slave in order to render her a more alluring object of desire, a SWEETER companion to man… What nonsense! When will a great man arise with sufficient strength of mind to puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject!” - MW
How surprised were we when Larry Summers turned up multiple times in the Epstein files? (After researching for this article, I can’t say I was surprised).
Paraphrasing.
Thanks a million to Naomi for sharing this quote with us in Women’s Circle!! It’s perfect!
Not to mention that neither Richard nor Scott ever mention patriarchy as part of the problem. Quite the opposite, they offer the very same patriarchal “solutions” we’ve been trying for centuries—make life structurally easier for men, make sure men work hard to make money so they can earn a wife, have boys and men be more masculine, have men double down on being providers and protectors, etc. Far from being solutions, those are the very things that got men into this problem to begin with. I honestly feel like I’m taking crazy pills whenever I listen to either of them speak. I can think of dozens of people more qualified to be given the mic on the topic.
Whew! Illuminating and infuriating! Explains a lot about the current white nationalist evangelical push to take away voting rights, property rights and selfhood from women. To keep women home having babies, raising families! Issuing home, having babies, raising families are all good things if that is your choice, but not if it is mandated by law!
This is so clear and true. The difference between being disenfranchised and “I don’t want to” is mind blowing and absolutely correct. The fact that women are now being blamed for everything from the male loneliness epidemic to the “feminization of the workplace to the feminization of every space where men are falling behind speaks volumes. And yet, men still rule the world and just look at the state of it.