The Subjection of Women: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Mill believes that women continue to face discrimination in the public sphere because the majority of men can’t bear to see them as equals. Without this factor, it is likely that everyone would admit that restricting women from public life is pointless. Indeed, recently it has become far less common for people to argue that women are less intelligent than men. Yet this can be attributed to the fact in the contemporary world, when people act in an oppressive way, they tend to pretend it is in the interests of those they are oppressing. This is why men claim that women would be made unhappy by holding certain positions or performing certain tasks, when the truth is that men don’t want women doing these things.

The reality is that when women are barred from participating in the public sphere, sometimes positions and roles are inevitably granted to men who are less competent than a woman might be. Of course, there will still be men who would be the best and most capable fit for a given role, but that will be decided by the process of competition. There is no need to exclude women from competing on the basis of their gender. It is neither effective nor just to have a smaller competitive pool in which women are not allowed to participate.

The question of who should be allowed to vote is in some ways separate from that of who should be allowed to hold political office. It wouldn’t make sense that only those who were suitable to be Members of Parliament themselves were able to vote in elections, because holding political office and voting are too very different tasks. Indeed, everyone should have the right of self-protection from unfair rule given by voting. Moreover, women are likely to share the political views of men of their own class. Even if women retain the status of slaves, they should still be allowed to vote in order to protect themselves from unjust laws.

It is unnecessary to determine in advance whether women are capable of holding particular positions. If a woman were to get to the point of successfully holding a professional position, she would already have proved that she was capable of it. Even if only a small number of women had such capabilities, it would still be important to protect their access to exercising them. Psychological knowledge suggests that if women seem less intelligent or skilled than men, it is because of their comparative lack of education rather than anything to do with their inherent nature. Moreover, there are historical examples of women—such as Queen Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc—who have proven themselves to be exceptionally capable in political roles.

Indeed, of the very few women who have ended up being queens, a disproportionately high amount have proven to be exceptionally talented rulers. Furthermore, they have tended to display characteristics that are usually seen as unfeminine, such as decisiveness and strength. Some respond to this with a joke about how—because monarchs are supposedly controlled by their partners—when a king is in power, it is really a woman in control (and vice versa). However, Mill notes that weak kings are usually just as much (if not more) influenced by male advisors than by their wives.

If women are capable of something as serious as political rule, surely it makes sense that they are also capable of lesser tasks. Royal women are the only class of women permitted to take an interest in topics like politics and have proved themselves highly competent. It can thus be inferred that the same would be true of all women, if they were given the chance to prove themselves. Overall, if women were completely free to pursue opportunities, activities, and roles according to their desire—without being influenced by restrictive societal norms—it is reasonable to believe that they would prove themselves equal to men.  

Thus far, women’s natures have been thoroughly distorted by the “unnatural […] state” of gender inequality. The differences that currently seem to exist between men and women can thus almost all be shown to stem from social conditions. Mill wonders if women’s special capacity for intuition is actually the product of having less education and less experience of public life. If one considers that intuition is in some ways oppositional to empirical research, then it makes sense that those who are less able to observe the world around them have a greater capacity for intuition. Women tend to make similar mistakes to an intelligent man who’s self-educated, in that they have excellent insight but might lack basic knowledge due to missing out on institutional learning. 

Women tend to be more interested in the real and present elements of life than in abstract theories. They thus have particular contributions to make when it comes to the work of putting theory into practice. They also tend to be very quick observers capable of making reasonable snap judgments. Some might say that women’s nervous disposition disqualifies them from professional life. But Mill suspects that much of what makes women seem “nervous” is that they have excess energy they are not allowed to put to use. He also thinks this is due to upper-class women being raised like “hot-house plants,” totally shielded from the outside world. Indeed, the fact that working-class women do not exhibit the same fragile tendencies seems to prove that they are caused by social conditions rather than biology.

Furthermore, both men and women suffer from nervousness, which—if it is biological—must be hereditary and therefore passed down to children of both sexes. Sustained nervousness could also be understood as a form of passion or spirit, which is regularly cited as essential to good leadership. Talented orators have this quality; having it does not necessarily mean that one is less fit for important roles. Even if it is true that women are more emotional than men and less able to focus for a long time on a particular task, there is nothing to say that being able to sustain focus for extended periods should be considered the norm.  

If women struggle to sustain attention on a single pursuit, it is perhaps because their lives consist of attending to many small, detailed tasks. When they want to focus on something, they are forced to “steal time” to think about it. Some claim that men’s mental superiority is explained by the fact that men have larger brains—yet this fact is far from an established fact. Furthermore, it is the “activity” of an organ, not its size, that determines its power. For example, it could just as easily be assumed that because men’s bodies are larger, they are less quick and agile than women. 

Another important point is that ideas about women, as well as the way women actually behave, both vary between cultures. In England, women are known as being more dependable than men. Furthermore, the behavior of English people tends to be exceptionally dependent on custom, which is far more important than natural inclination. Although it is extremely difficult to know the extent to which gendered characteristics are shaped by biology or social conditions, by studying a person’s characteristics and comparing it against the way they were raised, it is still possible to learn a substantial amount about how social conditions affect gender. 

When it comes to assessing how women have contributed to the fields of art, philosophy, and science, it could be argued that no first-rate works in any of these fields has been authored by a woman. At the same time, Sappho is considered to be one of the greatest Ancient Greek poets. At the time Mill is writing, the only manner in which women’s work is inferior to men’s is its lack of originality and innovation. Moreover, it is crucial to remember that across history, women have simply not been given the chance to access the time, space, and materials necessary to create work. Such conditions are essential to producing work that is original and innovative.

Only when women have had adequate education and material support to produce their work will it be possible to determine if they are capable of genius equal to men. It easy to claim that no women have excelled as historians, for example, without pointing out that no women has ever been given the proper resources or training for the role. Of course, it is true that many intelligent people spontaneously develop significant insights. Such insights occur in women too, yet in order for them to be shared with the world the woman in question needs to have the rare good fortune of finding a man who can understand, appreciate, and share the insight.

Furthermore, when a man does agree to help publish a woman’s thoughts, he often ends up receiving all the credit; if women lived in a society free from men, they would undoubtedly produce knowledge and writing of their own. When people seek to prove that women are naturally less skilled, they often give the example of fine art; unlike other fields, women are encouraged to engage in this pursuit, yet they’re often deemed to be less distinguished than male artists. However, while women are encouraged to engage in art as a hobby (and prove themselves to be skilled hobbyists), very few have the chance to pursue it as an actual profession. This means that they generally do not achieve a professional level of skill.

Speaking broadly, women have little time to spare to engage in pursuits such as art or writing, because they are forced to devote so much of their time to the household. Upper-class women who do not have to worry about the practical side of running a household still find that all their attention is taken up by “society” matters. In general, women are expected to always be available to attend to others; their own interests and pursuits are not considered important priorities. As a result, women are forced to carve out time in which to pursue their own interests. It is also possible that women’s lack of interest in fame contributes to the sense that they have not contributed much of significance to the field of art.

Women are often said to be morally superior to men—but this is an “empty compliment” considering that if people really believed this, it would likely not be the norm that women had to obey men. At the same time, the stereotype conveys a general awareness of the fact that power has a corrupting effect on men’s humanity. It is also worth noting that women generally receive none of the education thought to be central to developing good morality.

Neither men nor women typically complain about the existing order of things. The writings of women do tend to express dissatisfaction about the existing order, but they do not place blame on men. For women, the risks of trying to change the current system are too great, and thus it cannot be expected that they fight for their own rights until men join in.