Contesting the grounds for feminism in the Hispanic eighteenth century

Eighteenth-century intellectuals like Benito Feijoo and Josefa Amar defended women’s rights and role in society, invoking Enlightenment ideals of reason, equality, social utility, and improvement through education. By the end of the century, the extent of women’s education remained undefined and theories about women’s nature assigned them to the domestic sphere. Works about women’s education show how Enlightenment ideas about women circulated throughout the Atlantic world at the beginning of the liberal era and reflected broader anxieties about shifting power relations caused by the extension of literacy, cultural authority, and political agency to more classes of society.