Early Feminists of Europe and Bengal– Mary Wollstonecraft and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain- A Comparative Study

Abstract

In the context of East and West, Mary Wollstonecraft and Rokeya Sakhawat
Hossain are two pioneering and revolutionary writers in the history of
women’s rights movement. Though feminism as a movement started later
than their era respectively, their intellectual contributions and the everlasting
influence on the thinking of feminist concern placed them in a distinguished
position of proto-feminists or mothers of modern feminism. Both of them
fought for women’s rights at such a time and social setting when women had
no rights and opinions of their own, when they were not given many basic
human and civil rights in comparison with men, when women had degraded
social status and therefore the patriarchy was not ready to give them right
honor. For this reason, despite a clear gap in the periods to which they lived,
the similarity of their thinking and writings provides adequate ground to
bring them under a study of comparison and contrast. The paper attempts

make a critical study on Wollstonecraft and Rokeya with special focus on
their thoughts on society and education, contributions on the emancipation
and empowerment of women, role on the elimination of religious bigotry,
and above all, their influence on the women’s rights movement of
Bangladesh.