Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee All the Best. Today's text is an essay entitled

On the Equality of the Sexes by Judith Sargent Murray. This essay actually predates Mary

Willstonecraft's vindication of the rights of woman by a year. It was published in 1791.

But we're covering it now because Woolstonecraft continued the

tradition of European writers. And with Judith Sargent Murray, we've crossed the pond and we're carrying

the historical thread to the United States. Judith Sargent Murray was a brilliant thinker and writer, and I think her contributions

to American thought should be taught in our schools alongside Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

And I think it's a crying shame that I had never even heard of her before doing this project.

So I'm super excited to discuss her work today. But before we start that discussion,

I want to introduce my reading partner today, Jenny Austin Priest. Hi, Jenny. Hi, Amy.

So Jenny, if you could tell us about this kind of really little known and underappreciated,

but incredible author, that would be awesome. Totally. So Judith Sargent

Marie was, she was an early advocate of women's equality, access to education, and the right

to control their earnings. Her essay, which we're reading today on the equality of the sexes,

was published a year before vindication of the rights of women,

which I think you previously discussed on the podcast before this.

Born on May 1, 1751 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Murray was the oldest of eight children

in a wealthy merchant family. Sadly, only three of her siblings survived into adulthood.

Judith was close friends with her brother, John Rogers, and she got to listen in on his tutoring

sessions as he got ready to go to Harvard. But of course, she as a girl was not allowed to

receive formal schooling. Girls at the time were barely taught to read and write, and so Judith relied on the

vast family library to teach herself history, philosophy, geography, and literature. From a very

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