She was extensively intellectual. As a young woman Wollstonecraft supported herself as a lady's companion, seamstress, governess, and schoolteacher. .
Mary Wollstonecraft was largely self-educated and went on to alleviate the prejudices in the education system calling for educational reform including co-education. To diminish the ills of an unjust society, Wollstonecraft insisted on educational reconstruction, insisting it would benefit men and women alike. "Day schools, for particular ages, should be established by government, in which boys and girls might be educated together3," (Wollstonecraft, 1778). She thought that children and youth were subject to "a slavish bondage to parents" which "cramps every faculty of the mind." Wollstonecraft opposed segregation in education, arguing against girls" boarding schools, which promotes such "subjects" as needlepoint4. Such education would be likely to trivialize women into the arts of pleasing men, fostering the development of sexual flirts rather than creative human beings, as if their only mission in life was winning and serving a husband and bearing children for him: not exactly vital education to help a women get a respectable job, or create a future. Wollstonecraft argued that young girls were being robbed of individual rights. She boldly declared that all people-men, women, and children-have a right to an independent mind. She envisioned a society in which women could be educated and work alongside men as equals in every pursuit, and validated equal citizenship for both sexes, giving everyone "a direct share in deliberations of government5." "Let there be no coercion established in society," she said, "and, the common law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places6," (Wollstonecraft, 1781). An advocate of universal self-reliance and responsibility, she did not wish that women should exercise "power over men," only "over themselves7.