Speech in defense of women’s talent

Discourse in Defense of Women’s Talent (1786) is a brilliant essay in favor of female emancipation written in eighteenth-century Spain. The fundamental pillar on which Josefa Amar y Borbón builds her discourse – without questioning the intellectual equality between men and women – is the demand for access to education, “instruction” or “enlightenment”, to put an end to the “absolute ignorance” to which women have been relegated by men and that places them in a situation similar to that of master and slave.
Amar y Borbón undertakes with this essay the crusade of feminine demands that reaches our times.
It could be said that Discourse in Defense of Women’s Talent is an astute text, the author does not claim full and de facto equality. She called for equal opportunities in education, aware that this would be enough for women to achieve the place they deserve in society.