The Rights of Men was Wollstonecraft's first overtly political work, as well as her first feminist work; as Johnson contends, "it seems that in the act of writing the later portions of Rights of Men she discovered the subject that would preoccupy her for the rest of her career."
The Rights of Men var Wollstonecrafts første åbenlyse politiske arbejde og samtidig hendes første feministiske arbejde; som Johnson siger, "det virker som om, at hun opdagede det emne, der ville optage hende resten af livet, mens hun skrev sidste del af Rights of Men".