Women s Education in the Seventeenth Century
Can women be equal to men on an intellectual level? During the seventeenth century, women were not given as much of a chance, if any, to be educated. It was only a matter of time before women broke free of the restraints holding them back from becoming educated. As stated in Dorothy Gies McGuigan’s essay “To Be a Woman and a Scholar,” women went to great extents to obtain an education. Beginning in the seventeenth century, female scholars advanced the idea of the intellectual equality of women through their determined pursuit of self-education outside of the male-dominated university structure; their endurance of social pressures against learned women; and their contributions of important scholarly and literary ‘firsts’ in sprite of these academic and social barriers. Although women were not given an education like the men, that did not mean they were incapable of achieving an education.