How might a modern defender of womens rights respond to Defoe's "An Academy for Women"?

On the one
hand, a modern defender of women's rights who read Defoe's essay would regard it as a reflection
of traditional understandings of gender. Defoe clearly believes that women are primarily suited
to be helpmeets to men. As he writes near the end of the essay,

[I]n short, I would have men take women for companions, and educate them to be
fit for it. A woman of sense and breeding will scorn as much to encroach upon the
prerogative of man, as a man of sense will scorn to oppress the weakness of the woman.

Clearly, the notion that women are meant to be companions to men
and that their education and "breeding," as Defoe calls it, should prepare them for
that, is outdated. Indeed, many advocates for women's rights would argue that the persistence of
this attitude is at the heart of the struggle for women's equality today.

At
the same time, reading the document in context, Defoe makes a number of arguments that were, for
their time, progressive, and in that sense a modern supporter of women's rights might read him
as a sort of kindred spirit, although one far removed in time and ideology. He dismisses those
who regard women as intellectually inferior, arguing that, if they are, it is their education
that has made them that way, not anything inherent to their sex:

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the
lustre of it will never appear. And tis manifest, that as the rational soul distinguishes us
from brutes; so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than
others.

Indeed, at some points in the essay, Defoe posits
that women may have more intellectual potential than men:

The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their senses quicker than those
of the men; and what they might be capable of being bred to, is plain from some instances of
female wit, which this age is not without. Which upbraids us with Injustice, and looks as if we
denied women the advantages of education, for fear they should vie with the
men in their improvements.

The implications of this
argument are that much about gender is not inherent, but rather constructed and shaped by
society. This is fundamental to the modern understandings of gender that are basic to arguments
for women's rights. So some parts of Defoe, read in context, are advancing a fairly
sophisticated and progressive view of gender roles and education. Many modern advocates of
women's rights might recognize these in his essay.

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