Rousseau combines a contemptuous attitude towards the intellectual powers of women with an insistence that they should be responsible for the education of the young. In a famous passage in book V of Émile, he insists:

The children’s health depends in the first place on the mother’s, and the early education of man is also in a woman’s hands; his morals, his passions, his tastes, his pleasures, his happiness itself, depend on her. A woman’s education must therefore be planned in relation to man. To be pleasing in his sight, to win his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in manhood, to counsel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties of woman for all time, and this is what she should be taught while she is young.

Rousseau's general attitude, therefore, is that some women are sensible enough to be trusted with the elementary education of men, though even here, they require careful guidance. It is worth educating women as carefully as possible so that they can fulfil a supportive role as wives and mothers, but they are not to be expected to make use of this education on their own account. Their education should, therefore, have a domestic focus, with an emphasis on how to manage a household and look after children.

The Enlightenment saw a range of views on women's rights and the education of women. It is clear that Rousseau was on the more reactionary side, allied on this issue, as on few others, with conservative thinkers. John Locke represents the more liberal Enlightenment viewpoint when he remarks that the idea of male superiority was clearly dreamt up by men. Also, there were more educated women engaged in debate than at any other time in history and some of them, notably Mary Wollstonecraft in England, wrote directly on the topic of women's rights, intellectual capacities, and education.