Equality feminism

Equality feminism is a submovement of feminism. It is fundamentally at odds with difference feminism and expresses the crucial similarities between the male and female sexes.

Mary Wollstonecraft, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) claimed that women should enjoy the same legal and political rights as men on the grounds that they are human beings. Similarly, in The Subjection of Women (1869), John Stuart Mill advocated that society ought to be arranged according to reason and that 'accident of birth' is irrelevant.

Equality feminists believe that both men and women, while biologically and anatomically different, enter the world with the genetic inheritance of a mother and a father and from that respect human nature is androgynous, neutral, and equal.

Cathy Young is a notable equality feminist.