Wollstonecraft, Mill, and Women's Human Rights

Botting Eileen Hunt

How can women's rights be seen as a universal value rather than a Western value imposed upon the rest of the world? Addressing this question, Eileen Hunt Botting offers the first comparative study of writings by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Although Wollstonecraft and Mill were the primary philosophical architects of the view that women's rights are human rights, Botting shows how non-Western thinkers have revised and internationalized their original theories since the nineteenth century. Botting explains why this revised and internationalized theory of women's human rights-grown out of Wollstonecraft and Mill but stripped of their Eurocentric biases-is an important contribution to thinking about human rights in truly universal terms.

About the Author

Eileen Hunt Botting is associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Her previous books include an edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman". She lives in South Bend, IN, and Sherman, ME.

Reviews

"Insightful and robust, skillfully blending biography and historical contexts with examinations of changing notions of rights and emerging attitudes toward women, deepening our understanding on all fronts" – Gordon Schochet, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Rutgers University

"Well written and well argued" – Jeffrey Spinner-Halev, Kenan Eminent Professor of Political Ethics at the University of North Carollina at Chapel Hill

"A unique and fascinating combination of political theory and experienced politics. Botting is dealing with the real, concrete issues that face the world today and looking to the history of political theory to help us understand those issues and confront them" – Nancy J. Hirschmann, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality and Women at the University of Pennsylvania

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