Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft

One of the “Declaration of the Rights of woman” that seem particularly interesting to mean is the 7th right for woman. It says ” No woman is an exception; she is accused, arrested, and detained according to cases determined by law. Women obey, just as men, the rigorous law”. I found this to be interesting because this right is pointing out how women already have much rights as men, but men still refuse to give the same rights they have gave to themselves. For example, women can be arrested for the same crime as men and women must obey to the law, same as them men have to obey. Therefore they can be equally punished because their is no advantage between men and women if they were to break a law. This brings up the question, why do women have no rights, but men do? Both men and women have no advantage over each other over the law.
Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft seem to say about marriage is that women are not equal to men and are not seen on the same level as them when it comes to rights. I believe their concerns consist of how women are not given the equal opportunity such as men and put into a scenario where if the man leaves them, they are set to fail and can result into being homeless.
When reading these two 18th century texts I noticed how they not only use different vocabulary in their writings but often use metaphors often. One issue that De Gouges and Wollstonecraft address that still seems relevant to us today is in this quote from “vindications of the right of women”. “He then proceeds to prove that women ought to be weak and passive, because she has less bodily strength than man.” This quote speaks volumes on how women are seen as this fragile object and cannot be compared to man because man are seen as strength. This can be considered relevant today because we have lawmakers and politicians taking women’s rights away not by women but from men. For example, a law in Texas makes it where a woman can no longer have an abortion after 6 weeks. This was publicized on television of a man sitting down on a chair, signing a law stripping the rights of a woman’s right to choose what they can do with their body and had no say what so ever when it was happening.

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