08/26/2026
The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution after 70-plus years of the women's suffrage movement.
An early influence on the suffrage movement was Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Originally published as a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Wollstonecraft argues against Burke's defense of aristocracy and monarchy, advocating instead for republicanism, equality, and women's rights through education.
Education reform is central to her argument: she contends that women will only be considered equal to men once they have access to the same educational opportunities. She argues that the women's education system of her time set women up to fail, keeping them dependent and incapable. With proper education, she claims, women would not only succeed in domestic roles but also thrive as professionals in the workforce.
While Wollstonecraft never explicitly advocated for women's political enfranchisement, she did suggest that educated, capable women should also have a voice in government, writing that she believed “women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.”
Though her work caused controversy at the time of publication, its proposed reforms were largely ignored. Her reputation was further damaged after her death when her husband William Godwin published a memoir detailing her personal struggles. Wollstonecraft's ideas didn't gain real traction until the 1850s, when pioneers of the American suffrage movement adopted them.
