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On the Equality of the Sexes


On the Equality of the Sexes, also known as Essay: On the Equality of the Sexes, is a 1790 essay by Judith Sargent Murray. Murray wrote the work in 1770 but did not release it until April 1779, when she published it in two parts in two separate issues of Massachusetts Magazine. The essay predated Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women which was published in 1792 and 1794, and the work has been credited as being Murray's most important work.

In this feminist essay, Murray posed the argument of spiritual and intellectual equality between men and women. It also included a liberal analysis of traditional male superiority in the Bible and criticism of the deprivation of female education of the time.

In the first part of the essay, which is prefaced by a poem she wrote, Murray argues against the idea that women are not mentally equal to men in all areas. She notes that the “province of imagination hath long since been surrendered to us”, but that women are extremely limited in how they exercise their imaginations. She scornfully points out that women have channeled this creativity into fashion, slander, and gossip to incredibly skilled ends, but stresses that she is not pointing this out in order to "furnish these facts as instances of excellency in our sex" but to be used as "proofs of a creative faculty, of a lively imagination". Murray then states that traditional female activities like sewing and cooking will not bring out women's creativity and intellects to their fullest potential, as she views these as activities that do not require much thought or attention, and that women cannot fulfill that potential if other avenues of expression and learning are denied to them.

She then further supports her argument by comparing and contrasting two two-year-old siblings, one male and one female. Murray states that normally a two-year-old girl will be more wise than a boy of the same age, but she will receive dramatically different schooling from that age on and that "one is taught to aspire, and the other is early confined and limitted". As she believes that nature has given men and women the ability to be intellectual equals, Murray argues that any inferiority is a result of the culture and not nature. Because females are not given the same education and are confined to stereotypical gender roles and actions, that many women will end up exercising her imagination in destructive ways that will not fill the void that would otherwise have been appeased by higher education. As a result, the woman will grow embittered towards her brother, as she sees him as both her oppressor and as representative of what she was denied.


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