J. S. Mill on equal rights for women

 Equal Rights for Women: In The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill sets forth what has often been viewed as a progressive theory espousing equality for women in society. Mill argues that social and legal conditions which restrict the liberty of women serve as one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.”

Mill likens the position of women in society and particularly their position in the marital relationship in the 19th century to that of slaves subject to the will of their masters (i.e. Mill argues that marriage is the legal equivalent of slavery). Mill argues that numerous benefits will follow from allowing women the liberty to control their own destiny and the freedom to hold an equal position in society.

Among these benefits are: 

1 Improved conditions for women in marital relationships so that they are no longer legally subject to the will of a cruel husband but are, instead, equal partners in the marriage;

2 The removal of the self-worship instilled in men who believe they are better than women merely because of their gender and not for any substantive reason;

3 The creation of the family as a model of the “virtues of freedom”;

4 Most importantly, the promotion of human progress and the greatest happiness for all through the addition to society of new and diverse intellectual forces which will result from improved and equal education and opportunities for women.

Mill argues that the subjection of women has been justified by the claim that it is natural for men to dominate women. Women, so the claim goes, are naturally inferior to men. Mill, on the other hand, argues that it is impossible to know the true nature of women. Mill argues that women’s subordinate position in society is a remnant of the past practice of the rule of the physically strong over the weak.

The practice of men dominating women has since become customary (though the rule of the physically strong over the weak has become obsolete in civilized society) and has been mistaken as the “natural” order. Women are believed to be naturally inferior because of the unquestioning acceptance of this order and a resulting socialization process which creates women who will act in such a way to fill these inferior positions.

Mill argues that we cannot claim to know the true nature of women based on their behavior because this behaviour is a product of social forces that have conditioned women to behave in a certain way and have thus hidden and suppressed their true natural inclinations. The radical nature of Mill’s call for women’s equality is often lost to us after over a century of protest and changing social attitudes. 

Yet the subordination of women to men when Mill was writing remains striking. Among other indicators of this subordination are the following:

(i) British women had fewer grounds for divorce than men until 1923;

(ii) Husbands-controlled their wives personal property (with the picastonal exception of land) until the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882;

(iii) Children were the husband’s;

(iv) Rape was impossible within a marriage; and

(v) Wives lacked crucial features of legal personhood, since the husband was taken as the representative of the family (thereby eliminating the need for women’s suffrage).

This gives some indication of how disturbing and/or ridiculous the idea of a marriage between equals could appear to Victorians The object of the essay was to show that the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex to the other – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power ou privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”

This shows how Mill appeals to both the patent injustice of contemporary familial arrangements and to the negative moral impact of those arrangements on the people within them.  In particular, he discusses the ways in which the subordination of women negatively affects not only the women, but also the men and children in the family.

This subordination stunts the moral and intellectual development of women by restricting their field of activities, pushing them either into self-sacrifice or into selfishness and pettiness. Men, alternatively, either become brutal through their relationships with women or turn away from projects of self-improvement to pursue the social “consideration” that women desire.

It is important to note that Mill’s concern for the status of women dovetails with the rest of his thought it is not a disconnected issue. For example, his support for women’s equality was buttressed by associationism, which claims that minds are created by associative laws operating on experience. This implies that if we change the experiences and upbringing of women, then their minds will change.

This enabled Mill to argue against those who tried to suggest that the subordination of women to men reflected a natural order that women were by nature incapable of equality with men. If many women were incapable of true friendship with noble men, says Mill, that is not a result of their natures, but of their faulty environments.

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