The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision (Catholic Ideas for a Secular World)
Erika Bachiochi offers an original look at the development of feminism in the United States, advancing a vision of rights that rests upon our responsibilities to others.
In The Rights of Women, Erika Bachiochi explores the development of feminist thought in the United States. Inspired by the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Bachiochi presents the intellectual history of a lost vision of women's rights, seamlessly weaving philosophical insight, biographical portraits, and constitutional law to showcase the once predominant view that our rights properly rest upon our concrete responsibilities to God, self, family, and community.
Bachiochi proposes a philosophical and legal framework for rights that builds on the communitarian tradition of feminist thought as seen in the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Jean Bethke Elshtain. Drawing on the insight of prominent figures such as Sarah Grimké, Frances Willard, Florence Kelley, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Mary Ann Glendon, this book is unique in its treatment of the moral roots of women's rights in America and its critique of the movement's current trajectory. The Rights of Women provides a synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern political insight that locates the family's vital work at the very center of personal and political self-government. Bachiochi demonstrates that when rights are properly understood as a civil and political apparatus born of the natural duties we owe to one another, they make more visible our personal responsibilities and more viable our common life together.
This smart and sophisticated application of Wollstonecraft's thought will serve as a guide for how we might better value the culturally essential work of the home and thereby promote authentic personal and political freedom. The Rights of Women will interest students and scholars of political theory, gender and women's studies, constitutional law, and all readers interested in women's rights.
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Community Reviews
What it's about:
The book traces the intellectual history of women's rights, drawing on the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, and combines philosophical argument, biographical portraits, and constitutional law analysis to make the case that rights were once understood as resting on concrete responsibilities to God, self, family, and community, rather than as ends in themselves. (Amazon) Bachiochi builds a philosophical and legal framework that draws on the communitarian strand of feminist thought associated with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Jean Bethke Elshtain.
Key figures covered: The book examines thinkers and activists like Sarah Grimké, Frances Willard, Florence Kelley, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Mary Ann Glendon, tracing the moral roots of the American women's rights movement and critiquing where it stands today.
Core argument: Bachiochi argues that although women's rights have expanded over the last century, something essential was lost along the way — and asks whether that lost element is worth recovering. She traces how the idea of equal citizenship for women, first articulated by Wollstonecraft in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," has shifted into something that in some ways contradicts its original moral grounding.
How it ends: According to a CBMW review, the book closes with Bachiochi proposing a new vision for women's rights in the 21st century — one where natural vocations are seen as equally worthy as corporate work, and where the "duties of care" are reclaimed and celebrated rather than sidelined. (One Moment Please) The reviewer frames the book as both a strong history of the American women's rights movement and a proposed path forward for Christian conceptions of women's rights.
Reception: It's positioned in the "Catholic Ideas for a Secular World" series, and reviewers (e.g., Law & Liberty, EPPC) generally frame it as a serious critique of intellectual inconsistencies within contemporary feminism, paired with an attempt to derive a coherent theory of liberty from earlier feminist thinkers rather than just analyzing them.
