The Subjection of Women: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

In The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill will argue that the current state of gender inequality is inherently wrong and that it is holding back human civilization. Men and women should instead exist in a state of “perfect equality,” with neither gender having any power or privilege over the other. This is a difficult argument to make, because people tend to have a very strong emotional response to the issue of gender, which prohibits critical, rational engagement. Furthermore, it is especially challenging to make an argument that contradicts an opinion held by most people in society. 

At the time Mill is writing, it is assumed that most people are in favor of liberty for all people, including equal treatment under the law. In reality, however, the Mill still faces an uphill battle arguing that men and women should be equal. Even if his argument were perfectly sound, it would not be enough to convince most people, because gender inequality is such a deeply entrenched aspect of society. Mill understands how challenging it is to question the ideas which with one has been raised. He doesn’t think the problem is that people are not persuaded enough by argument, but that they are too easily persuaded by emotion.   

Mill laments the fact that in the 19th century, “instinct” is too often favored over reason. Mill is happy to accept people’s judgment that his position is wrong, but not if this judgment is clouded by bias. It would be one thing if the current system of gender inequality had been arrived at via a rational process of argument and experimentation, proving it to be the system that best ensured both men and women’s well-being. However, this is the opposite of what actually happened. Not only has no other system been tested; the current system has never even been properly discussed.

Throughout history, women have been subordinate to men due to their comparative physical weakness. This imbalance has been reinforced by laws that give women few legal rights. Mill compares this phenomenon to slavery, which began with enslaved people being physically overpowered by masters. Then, it was turned into an elaborate legal framework that protected and enhanced the power of enslavers. For many centuries, both slavery and gender inequality were not questioned by any philosopher. Now, the enslavement of men has been largely abolished, but women’s subordination—which Mill characterizes as female slavery—persists, albeit in a milder form. 

The fact that gender inequality has persisted for so long does not mean it is a good thing. It is important to remember that the reason gender inequality exists in the first place is due to the “law of the strongest,” a principle that has been rejected in the modern world. Gender is perhaps the only domain in which the “law of the strongest” persists. In the modern world, people are starkly disconnected from what the primitive version of human society was like. In this primitive state, life was harsh and heavily biased toward those with the most physical power.

In ancient times, the Stoics (along with the Jews) were the first to introduce the idea that enslavers had an ethical duty toward the enslaved. Christianity upheld this view in theory, but for many centuries, it was not properly implemented in Christian societies. While people expressed their faith in intense ways—from going to war to fasting—Christian devotion did not decrease the existence of violence and tyranny. It is only recently, with the emergence of a large bourgeois class and a more powerful urban working class, that society has shifted away from tyranny and toward freedom.

Only 40 years prior to the time of Mill’s writing, English people were still allowed to own enslaved people, kidnapping them from their homelands and “work[ing] them literally to death.” Yet even while slavery was legal, many English people were critical of it, because it was such an extreme example of the law of force and because the only justifications for it were profit and greed. At the same time, other institutions—such as the monarchy—currently remain in place in England despite the fact that they have no real justification. Once a system like the monarchy is established, it is hard to dismantle it. Similarly, gender inequality has notable lasting power.  

One reason for why gender inequality has survived so long is because it gives an opportunity for all men—regardless of their class—to have power over women. Moreover, men are particularly well set up to squash resistance from women, because of the intimacy between the sexes. Men constantly bribe or intimidate women to obey. For this reason, even as other system of unjust power and authority have been dismantled, gender inequality remains. Some people might object that whereas slavery and the monarchy are “arbitrary” social inventions, the unequal relation between the sexes is “natural.” In reality, however, gender inequality only seems natural—just as slavery did before abolition. 

Just as in Ancient Greek times certain ethnic groups were suggested to have “slave natures,” so too were Black people considered natural slaves but white people in the American South. Similarly, those who support the monarchy also call it “natural,” and the law of force itself is often characterized as humanity’s natural state. In the Middle Ages, the idea that a serf was equal to a nobleman would have seemed extremely unnatural and untrue. Even when serfs fought for better rights, they did not make the case that they were equal to those ranked above them. Because gender inequality is universal, it seems natural.

However, history shows that current ideas about gender were not always in place. In feudal times, upper-class women were encouraged to have “masculine” traits such as physical strength. In Ancient Greece, there were examples of relatively free and independent women such as the Spartans and Amazons (who were mythological but understood to be real by people at the time).

Some people will object that there is another important difference between gender inequality and other forms of domination, because women freely consent to their status. Firstly, this is not actually true; ever since women have been allowed to publish writing, they have expressed dissatisfaction with their oppression. Recently, thousands of English women wrote a petition to Parliament in favor of female suffrage. In the U.S., France, Italy, Switzerland, and Russia, women are also fighting for their rights. Furthermore, it is important to remember that oppressed people always make gradual demands for their rights, rather than insisting on immediate full equality. They begin by criticizing excessive or unnecessary acts of oppression before they demand an end to the unequal relationship itself.    

There are many reasons why women are unlikely to resist male oppression. First of all, most men do not want to feel that they are oppressing women, but rather want women to willingly submit to them. For this reason, they indoctrinate women into accepting their own oppression. Women are raised to believe that, unlike men, they are naturally submissive. They come to think that it is their duty to live in service of other people. Overall, this has the effect of making women believe that the sole purpose of their lives is to be “attractive to men.”

If the same were true of another oppressed group—for example, if peasants were indoctrinated into obsessing over the approval of noblemen—then it is likely people would also think that the subjugation of this group was “natural.” It is therefore safe to say that just because gender inequality is the norm doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. In fact, Mill will now go on to prove that gender inequality is a harmful, out-of-date system that should be abandoned. Modern society is defined by the fact that the position a person was born into no longer determines what they can do in life. This was very different in the past, when a person’s class and race defined how they lived and what they were able to achieve.

In modern Europe, restrictive laws and customs have been relaxed in order to allow individuals greater freedom in what they want to pursue. While of course people have different levels of ability and not everyone is capable of performing every role, people now generally believe that “freedom of individual choice” is the system that works best for society as a whole. When people realize that they are not capable of engaging in a particular pursuit, they usually give up on it of their own accord and thus don’t need restrictive laws to prevent them from doing it.

Given this trend toward individual freedom, there is no reason to believe that any person would be naturally more or less suited to a particular pursuit due to their race, class, or gender. Even if a restrictive system only rarely keeps out highly talented people, this is still a terrible loss. Currently, almost all roles in the world (except royalty) can be gained by any man via a competitive, meritocratic process. Some roles require that a person be wealthy, but anyone can strive to become wealthy. Men are not legally banned from attempting to compete for a role; the laws that ban women from competing on account of their gender are therefore a unique form of discrimination.

Gender discrimination is, then, the sole survivor of an antiquated system, which means that it should be intensely scrutinized to test if its merits still stand. There needs to be a fair, honest, and comprehensive discussion of gender inequality that doesn’t rely upon flimsy assertions—such as the claim that the majority of people support the current system. Some might argue that gender equality could only be proven to work in theory. But the same argument could actually be used against the current system, since nothing else has been tried. Without anything to compare the current system with, it is impossible to determine that it is the better way of doing this.

Similarly, it does not make sense to argue that the inherent nature of men and women leads them to embrace the current system. Without trying another system, it is impossible to know what the inherent nature of men and women even is. What people call women’s nature is actually artificial, because it is produced by the social conditions of the current world. Indeed, the general lack of knowledge about how people come to be the way they are is currently the biggest factor holding back the advancement of thought. False stereotypes abound about people of particular nationalities, and the same is true of men and women—including the idea that men care more about the greater good than women do. 

In order to determine what the natural differences between men and women are, it is first necessary to prove with absolute certainty that these differences do not have a social origin. Currently, there is very little real knowledge on this matter, in part because women themselves are so rarely able to contribute to research. Men tend to think they know a lot about women simply because they have had intimate relationships with them. In fact, the opposite is true: men know very little about women, because wives deliberately hide their true natures from their husbands. Even in rare cases when a man is generally open and interested in knowing his wife’s nature, their unequal relationship will inevitably make it difficult for him to properly understand her.    

The problem is not that women aim to be deceptive but that—due to their position of relative powerlessness—they have so much to lose if their husbands see something they dislike. This prevents men from really knowing women. Moreover, even if a man was to understand his wife perfectly, he still wouldn’t have any knowledge about women of other cultures and classes. Similar problems play out in publishing. It is only recently that women have started being able to publish their own writing, and when they do, they must be careful not to write anything of which men would disapprove. While this is starting to change, people will only have access to women’s real thoughts when there is no gender discrimination in the world of publishing.

Although Mill has devoted much time to describing the incredible difficulty of men really being able to know women, the good news is that according to the principles on which modern society is founded, it should be women themselves who determine what their role should be. Indeed, it is only via introducing this system that women’s real thoughts will become clear. It doesn’t make sense to restrict women from pursuits based on the idea that they are incapable of engaging in them. If they truly were incapable, then in a liberal, competitive society, they would be disqualified anyway.

Men often claim that a woman’s natural role is to be a wife and mother. Yet this doesn’t make much logical sense either, because if it were true, there wouldn’t need to be any laws and customs incentivizing them to do it. Indeed, the truth is likely closer to the fact that society needs women to produce children, and this is why women are more or less forced to do so. (The same logic was used when it came to justifying systems like slavery or the forced conscription of sailors.) In the case of gender, it arguably reveals that men secretly know that marriage is not very appealing for women. If women all had freedom of choice, Mill suspects that few would choose to only be wives and mothers.