Wollstonecraft's Gender & Culture

The pernicious effects against women are numerous according to Wollstonecraft. She begins by saying women are deprived of a sense of duty if they cannot work. Men feel bad when they cannot work and she says women feel the same way and should not be always shackled to the home. She argues that women are unfairly held with contempt when they have a position of power causing many women to succumb to normal feminine role rather than living to their full potential. Realizing that a male dominated society is established through the legislature, she dislikes the laws put in place to purposefully hold women back.

Reading this essay it seems that Wollstonecraft knows women historically have always been considered property and that this is immoral. She is trying to get women to realize that their worth more than just property and that there is only minor, unimportant differences between the sexes.

The "unnatural distinctions" effectively hold women's mind captive. Things that separate people always lead to an oppressing superior class and that class always maintains its power however possible. Mindsets embedded into oppressed classes are the most successful tool of oppression that men or any other oppressor can employ.