Six prominent women scholars gathered in Agassiz House yesterday to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women.

The panelists, all bringing very different backgrounds and approaches to the topic, were writer Betty Friedan, psychoanalyst and author Juliet Mitchell, University of Wisconsin history professor Gerda Lerner and Williams College political science professor Dessima Williams.

Joined by Professor of Education Carol Gilligan and Bina Agarwal, an economist from the University of Delhi and a former visiting professor in women's studies, the panel engaged in a broad-based discussion on the current state of the feminist movement.

The event, which drew a crowd of more than 400, was part of the seventh annual Women's Studies Colloquium on Gender, Culture and Society and was the final event of Women's History Week.

Assistant Professor of History Susan Pedersen introduced the colloquium by discussing Wollstonecraft's turbulent life and the public response to Wollstonecraft's work in the century following her death.

"Wollstonecraft was a product of her particular moment, but was appropriated by many eras," Pederson said.

Lerner, the first panelist to speak, gave a historical perspective on Wollstonecraft as a feminist thinker.

Lerner contrasted Wollstonecraft to her feminist predecessors in the 17th century, arguing that her major innovation was the inclusion of poor, single and middle class women into John Locke's framework of human rights.

Following Lerner, Mitchell contrasted Wollstonecraft's Vindication to her fiction. While Vindication was an optimistic work, she said, it was later dwarfed by Wollstonecraft's more pessimistic novels, which revealed her views on the inequality between men and women.

"The novels undercut the opti- mism of the Vindication and show theproblems in fighting for women's rights," shesaid.

Williams then related Wollstonecraft's writingsto female leaders in developing countries and tothe need for a more broadly based feministmovement.

"We need an extension in the fights for women'srights--not vindication, but empowerment," shesaid.

Betty Friedan, author of The FeminineMystique and founder of the NationalOrganization for Women (NOW), followed Williamswith a speech that stressed the need for a newparadigm in the fight for women's rights.

Women need a movement that extends far beyondthe basic rights that Wollstonecraft advocated,she said.

"When I wrote the statement of purpose forNOW," she said, "I had the dimmest vision of equalrights of women, just as Mary Wollstonecraft hadthe dimmest vision of women's rights."

In the past 25 years, she said, the women'smovement has advanced far beyond both MaryWollstonecraft's vision and the first wave ofmodern feminism.