Early feminist thought

Abstract

Contrary to popular opinion, feminist theory did not begin with Mary Wollstonecraft at the end of the eighteenth century, but goes back at least to medieval times (and no doubt found private expression much earlier). As far as we know, the earliest public debate was conducted entirely by men, but from the fifteenth century women’s voices were beginning to be heard, and the first woman to write about the rights and duties of her sex seems to have been the Frenchwoman Christine de Pisan (1364–1430). From the point of view of feminist political theory, what is interesting about the earliest writings is not so much the details of what individual writers of the time had to say, for these did not yet constitute an analysis of power relations or any kind of political programme, but rather the fact that debates over women’s role in society that include a recognisably feminist perspective go back further than had been commonly assumed. It is also interesting to note that from the first such debates had an international character so that, for example, de Pisan’s influence can be traced to the debates in England at the end of the seventeenth century (Ferguson, 1985, p. xi; see also de la Barre, 1990; Willard, 1975; Shahar, 1983).