As were Presbyteries, Volunteer companies and Masonic lodges through which they recruited, the United Irishmen were a male fraternity. In serialising William Godwin's "Enquiry Concerning political Justice" (1793), the "Northern Star" had advised them of the moral and intellectual enlightenment found in an "equal and liberal intercourse" between men and women. The paper had also reviewed and commended Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). But the call was not made for women's civic and political emancipation. In publishing excerpts from Wollstonecraft's work, the "Star" focussed entirely upon issues of female education.