Rightly Remembering the Ladies

A Review by Ardith Amon of 
The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision
by Erika Bachiochi

The question of women’s rights has been a large part of the American mind since 1776 when Abigail Adams called upon her husband, John Adams, to “Remember the Ladies.” Remember that women are also citizens. Remember that women are also bound to obey and respect the laws. Remember that women should also have a voice in the government. In 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others officially called for women’s right to vote. Parades were organized, petitions signed, and after 72 years the 19th Amendment was ratified, finally granting women the right to vote. 

Fighting for women’s suffrage largely made up what is considered the first wave of the women’s rights movement. The underlying idea of not only the first wave, but the second and third waves as well, is that women are equal to men. While each wave at its core emphasizes this, each has a different focus. The first focused on political equality, the second focused on social equality, and the third focused on the inclusion of all women  in the fight for social equality. The women’s rights movement has only gained momentum over time, and it is still going strong today, with arguments claiming there is a fourth wave of the movement. The question for us now is what exactly is the women’s rights movement fighting for today? Is the movement headed  in the right direction or is it only creating problems for women today? 

A major part of Bachiochi’s book is attempting to pinpoint where the women’s rights movement went astray. But what could possibly be wrong with the women’s rights movement today if women are simply fighting for equality with men? Bachiochi suggests that today’s women’s rights movement is no longer fighting for equal rights in the same sense that the first wave feminists did. Early advocates wanted women to be equal to men in that they wanted political equality and supported the right to vote, arguing that men and women should be seen as equals under the law. Bachiochi identifies a shift in the meaning of equality in the modern women’s rights movement. Today, it no longer simply means being equal under the law but rather being treated the same. Bachiochi seeks to discern how this perception of equality has morphed to mean something radically different than what the first-wave feminists set out to accomplish.

Bachiochi begins her book by establishing what the women’s rights movement stood for when it first began to take shape as an organized movement. In the beginning, women prioritized morality and dignity in the human person, and from there stemmed the idea that women are equal to men and should be treated as such. The movement emphasized the moral truth of their cause. The nation was founded on the moral truth that all human beings–including women–are created equal and worthy of dignity. The goal therefore was simply for women to attain equal rights as citizens. Now, however, the movement looks nothing like its ancestor. On the surface, women are still fighting for equality with men, but what does that equality look like? What are women actually fighting for today? The modern movement wants women to be the same as men, attempting to destroy any differences between the two. But how did the movement stray from the original goal? How can the modern movement reclaim the moral truth that women are inherently equal to men and worthy of dignity as human beings? What should the freedom and equality of women actually look like? These questions are the crux of Bachiochi’s argument about the women’s rights movement. 

Bachiochi first looks at the British writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). Bachiochi champions Wollstonecraft’s vision for women throughout the book, and it is this vision that she argues will redeem the women’s rights movement today. According to Bachiochi, the sexual revolution of the 1970s caused the women’s rights movement to depart from Wollstonecraft’s vision of equality, ultimately damaging the movement and women as a whole rather than helping them live flourishing lives. At the heart of Wollstonecraft’s philosophy is the importance of virtue. Bachiochi writes, “Human beings’ progress in virtue—not their attainment of property, wealth, or status—would guarantee personal, familial, and societal happiness. This was her claim.”  Furthermore, Wollstonecraft argues that human beings are endowed with reason and they should use their rational capacities to try and achieve the moral and intellectual virtue necessary for living a good and fulfilling life. She also argues that both men and women ought to be encouraged towards virtue, and moreover women and men are both equally capable of virtue and reason. However, Wollstonecraft does not think that men and women achieve excellence in the same way, and Bachiochi stresses this point. 

The other component of Wollstonecraft’s philosophy, which is arguably why it was so radical at the time, is that the domestic sphere is the primary and most important concern for both men and women because of its role in cultivating virtue in children. Bachiochi writes, “Wollstonecraft believed that domestic affections should take priority for both men and women, as therein lay the happiness of the couple, their children, and the world into which well-loved, self-possessed persons would go.” For Wollstonecraft, child-rearing and the inculcation of reason and virtue is the most important job a woman will have. This is also the most important job men will have. The next part of Wollstonecraft’s vision is that both men and women should be expected to cultivate the virtue of chastity, using their reason to govern their sexual desires. Wollstonecraft concludes that men and women in a marriage centered towards virtue can work together to attain human excellence. 

Men and women ought to be held to the same standards and the same expectations. This is an important point that Bachiochi argues needs to be reclaimed. The modern movement encourages women to lower themselves to the level expected of men in that women should not need to regulate sexual desires because men are not expected to do so. What makes the first wave of the women’s rights movement so admirable is that women were fighting for true equality and freedom rather than this lackluster version of equality (which really means sameness in modern eyes). Bachiochi writes, “These women were not seeking to absolve themselves from cultural expectations of virtue and refinement; rather, they demanded that the same be expected of men.” This fight for men to be held accountable to the same standards as women was a key pillar of first wave feminism. 

Throughout the book, Bachiochi also explores the tension between the idea of women’s freedom and independence and the role of the family, and she explains how this tension arose in the movement as a result of the sexual revolution. In exploring how the sexual revolution has caused the women’s rights movement to call for a degradation of women instead of an elevation of men, she writes, “if men could seemingly engage in sexual intercourse detached from the responsibilities inherent in pregnancy and childbearing … perhaps women should now be free to do the same.”

While Bachiochi argues that the modern movement has gone astray and is misguided in its conception of equality, it is important to note that she does recognize the achievements of the women’s rights movement as a whole. Bachiochi praises the work of women’s rights activists that made it possible for women to further their own education. She acknowledges the fact that women are no longer confined simply to the household, and she celebrates the success women have found in the political sphere. The problem with the women’s rights movement is not that women can now work and have a life outside of the home, but rather that the modern movement encourages women to abandon the qualities and differences that make them women in a fruitless quest to become like men. The modern movement has destroyed the idea that men and women can be equal while in important senses remaining different at the same time. Bachiochi also argues that the modern movement obscures the idea that women and men should prioritize the family. The main problem that Bachiochi points to as representative of women attempting to become the same as men is abortion. Instead of calling for men to reorient their lives towards the family, the modern movement encourages women to leave behind any responsibility they might have for a child by promoting abortion. Instead of calling on men to stick around for their children and restrain themselves from acting on every sexual impulse, the sexual revolution called for women to be the same in that women should also be able to walk away from their children. And as a result of contraception and abortion, women are now able to do so. 

This is how the women’s rights movement has gone astray. By arguing that women should be able to pursue their sexual desires freely just as men, women have found themselves in a society that disregards and even dishonors the fact that women are often mothers. The culture today does not, as a whole at least, support women who are also mothers in the workforce. Perhaps Bachiochi’s most shocking yet compelling argument in the book is when she writes that “easy abortion access in the United States has allowed women to be taken advantage of more fully in the workplace and in the bedroom instead.” The modern movement ought to abandon this push for women to become the same as men. Bachiochi makes a compelling argument when she insists that the modern movement should seek to reclaim the moral truth that women and men are equal because they are both capable of attaining human excellence, and furthermore they should strive towards this goal together. 

Ardith Amon is a graduate of Ashland University currently teaching 9th Grade Humane Letters and Poetry at Great Hearts Trivium Preparatory Academy in Arizona. She is an alumna of the Shaftesbury Fellowship (’22).