In The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill argues both that the current state of gender inequality is inherently wrong and that it is prohibiting human flourishing. Instead of men holding disproportionate privilege and power, men and women should be entirely equal. Mill laments the fact that the unequal system currently in place was not decided upon via a process of rational deliberation, but instead emerged from the “law of the strongest” that favored those with the most physical strength. A modern, fair society should move away from this cruel system and institute structures that will best support the prosperity of all people.
People often justify gender inequality by arguing that it reflects human nature—but the same thing was once said of slavery, which is now widely understood to be a brutal, abhorrent institution. Others argue that women freely consent to being ruled by men, yet this isn’t actually true either. Many women express their displeasure at their subjugation, including those across the world who are currently fighting for the right to vote. The other problem is that men generally do not wish to feel that they are oppressing women, and thus they indoctrinate women into believing (or behaving like) they welcome their oppression.
In modern Europe, it is now agreed upon that the best way to organize society is through the principles of individual freedom and competitive meritocracy. This allows people to engage in those pursuits that they enjoy and excel at, while preventing people from performing roles in which they are incompetent. Because no one was raised outside of society, it is impossible to know for sure which gendered characteristics are biological and which are produced by social conditions. Furthermore, the extreme power differential makes it difficult for men to truly understand women. People claim that a woman’s natural role is to be a wife and mother—but if this were really true, women wouldn’t need to be coerced into devoting their lives to this role and nothing else.
Mill argues that married women are essentially enslaved to their husbands, who hold absolute power over them. Women cannot own property of their own and even if their husband dies they cannot legally be considered the guardian of their own children. For a long time, divorce was either nonexistent or prohibitively expensive, which meant that once women married, their tie to their husbands was inescapable. Men do not have to prove themselves qualified or worthy of having power over women and indeed often abuse this power. Some might say that just as people need a government to efficiently make decisions for them, each family needs a leader. In reality, however, the family is a site of despotism, and people should be just as worried about this as they are about political despotism. If the family was structured differently, it could instead be an institution that taught people the values of individual freedom, autonomy, dignity, and equality.
Mill thinks that the real reason why women continue to face so much discrimination in the public sphere is because most men are unwilling to view women as equals. The result is that many posts go to men who are less competent than a woman would be at performing the role. But in a competitive meritocracy, it wouldn’t be necessary to prove in advance that women could succeed in a particular position—if she was able to attain the position, she would already have proved that she could succeed in it. If women seem less intelligent or skilled than men, it is surely due to their lack of education rather than natural deficiencies. Figures from history such as Queen Elizabeth I or Joan of Arc show that women are more than capable of political rule, which implies they should also be capable of much less weighty roles too.
Next, Mill acknowledges that women are famed for their strong intuition, and he proposes that this is because they are comparatively uneducated and thus must rely on instinct more than acquired knowledge. Negative stereotypes about women—such as their nervousness and fragility—are likely caused by the restrictive, unhealthy conditions in which they are forced to live. Currently, women have little time or resources to devote to pursuits of their own choosing, which is part of why there have been so few female geniuses in the fields of philosophy, science, or art. When women try to publish their writing, they usually have to do so with a man’s help, and the result is often that the man in question takes (or is given) sole credit for their ideas.
Neither men nor women frequently complain about the existing way of things—and when women do complain, they do not place blame on men. However, this may be because the consequences of doing so would be too great. Men need to join the fight for gender equality because women risk too much by engaging in the battle without male support. As well as improving the conditions of women themselves, ending gender equality would spark a positive transformation in society as a whole. Currently, the existence of gendered oppression warps society and particularly the vitally important principles of justice and equality on which morality should be based.
Although women have faced significant restrictions, they have still managed to make significant contributions to society—albeit often in covert ways. At the same time, not all of these contributions are necessarily positive. For example, Mill believes it is a shame that women tend to usually fall on the side of convention and rebuke their husbands for being politically radical. If women received better education and had more power in society, they would likely become more imaginative. They would also be better partners for their husbands, challenging them instead of holding them back. Without gender oppression, marriage might become more similar to a friendship between two people of the same sex, wherein both parties can disagree but enrich each other through that disagreement. The ideal marriage would be one between true equals, although Mill knows that for many people, this is hard to even imagine.
Overall, the insult to individual freedom and autonomy constituted by gendered oppression is a major blight on society that is preventing human flourishing. For this reason, it must be eradicated.
