There are a number of reasons that Mary Wollstonecraft believed women were human beings who deserved the same basic rights as men. In her lengthy essay Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft (1792) highlights a majority of these reasons.
Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women should have the same fundamental rights as men. One of her biggest arguments in support of this is that it is a rational position to take, since women are the primary educators of children. She argues that women are not inferior to men intellectually but only seem so because men have denied them education. This is detrimental to society because women are unable to educate their children well or serve as "companions" to their husbands rather than mere adornment for them. As Wollstonecraft (1792) writes, the same principles guiding men must guide women in society: "Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same." In this sense, it is essential for the well-being of families and of the nation for women to have the same basic rights as men.
Another reason Wollstonecraft argues women should have the same basic rights as men is because in the eyes of God they are equal. As Wollstonecraft (1792) writes, "I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [men] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God." In this sense, Wollstonecraft argues it is only rational that men and women have the same fundamental rights. She also argues that women having the same rights - like the right to education - would only improve marriage and; therefore, society, because it would strengthen marriag...