Freedom of Vocation and Occupational Choice

Sor Juana's entry into the convent was partly a strategy to preserve intellectual freedom—it was one of few paths available to her as a woman seeking to study and write. Yet she chafed against the expectation that convent life meant abandoning her intellectual vocation. She insisted on her right to pursue learning and writing as her life's work, resisting pressure to conform to narrower expectations of female religious life. In libertarian terms, occupational freedom is inseparable from property and freedom: you cannot genuinely own your labor or its fruits if others coercively dictate what work you must or must not do. Sor Juana's example illuminates how status-based restrictions on vocation—whether by gender, class, caste, or other categories—constitute property violations, preventing people from selling their labor freely or benefiting from their talents. Applied to libertarian justice, this concept demands examination of occupational licensing that restricts entry, discrimination in hiring and advancement, and inheritance-based restrictions on work. True freedom requires that individuals can choose vocations, develop skills, and capture the economic benefits of their own work.