I have a dream speech—for women

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in her "I have a dream" speech (1792) advocated for the rights of women—to own property, to have an education equal to her brothers and to be equal under the law in marriage.  How’s that working out 225 years later?

Women certainly can own property and inherit it, but many choose the hair dresser, manicurist, clothing designer, a cute trendy apartment and partying with friends rather than the stock market or buying a rental property to manage. The rate of college enrollment for women has exceeded men for  three decades, and in many of our cities, they out earn male peers with the same education. Yet women still congregate in the social sciences and artistic fields (the sketching and needlepoint of the 18th century), by-passing business and the hard sciences despite 50 years of fiddling with the curricula in the lower grades and sending them off to math camp in the summers. Politicians and academicians continue to throttle us with “pay gap'” misinformation turning women into another victim class for votes.

And marriage?   Careers, some of which are going nowhere, are more important to some educated young women than a solid marriage with children. Then in their late 30s, they find the pickins slim. Birth control and abortion have turned women into sterile playthings for men to objectify. They go into middle age without a family network and a more advantageous combined household income .

Mary—did you know?

http://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/434