In The Subjection of Women, Mill gives several reasons why it is inherently wrong to oppress women, but he also gives a utilitarian argument for gender equality, meaning that he makes a case as to why enhancing women’s rights will benefit society as a whole. This means that it is not only in the interest of women to support gender equality, but of men too. Through focusing on the broader benefits to society that gender equality would bring, Mill rejects the notion that gender equality is a matter of pitting men against women and asserts that women’s rights are essential to the civilization’s overall advancement.
Mill’s main argument about how gender equality would benefit everyone consists in the fact that when women’s rights are restricted, women are not able to properly use their intelligence and talents in order to contribute to society. He points out that for much of European history, women have been prevented from receiving an education, barred from most jobs, and confined to the domestic sphere. At the time he is writing, this is just beginning to change, and he argues that this change will ultimately come to aid “human improvement.” In presenting his account of why gender equality would improve human society, Mill draws on the utilitarian assumption that society should be organized in a manner that benefits most people. He argues that not only would gender equality benefit the half of the world’s population who are themselves women, but many men would benefit as well, because letting women fully contribute to society would enhance life for everyone. He points out that allowing women to be able to freely choose their occupation based on their ability would “doubl[e] the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity.” When women’s rights are restricted, much of human skill is completely wasted, which holds back the advancement of the species. Such wastefulness is inefficient and needlessly harmful—the opposite of a utilitarian way of organizing society.
Mill is aware that many people believe that women are not as intelligent or capable as men and thus that restricting women’s roles does not harm society, as women have little contribute. He critiques this idea by pointing out that there is little evidence to suggest that women are inherently less intelligent or capable and men. Women are only perceived as less capable because they do not have the same opportunities and resources as men. Indeed, he points out that in rare situations when women have been afforded an education and/or given access to power, they have proved themselves to be highly competent. He argues that Queen Elizabeth I, for example, “showed herself equal to the greatest.”
In arguing that gender equality is a matter of the greater good, Mill does not just claim that women’s rights will lead to better outcomes for everyone; he also argues that gender oppression is the cause of many societal problems presumed to have nothing to do with gender. For example, the fact that there are such extreme power imbalances between men and women within the family is directly connected to the power imbalances that exist in society at large: “The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues of despotism, but also its vices, are largely nourished.” Mill argues that men learn to wield disproportionate power and authority within their family homes and then go on to do the same in the wider world, which often has negative results. Although he acknowledges that despotism might have some “virtues,” as a liberal philosopher, he believes that power should be assigned to the most capable and that no one should have absolute power over anyone else—ideas that he repeats throughout the book.
At times, Mill’s argument about how gender oppression is the source of broader societal harms gets quite radical—both for the context in which he was writing and even perhaps for the present. At one point he claims, “All the selfish propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which exist among making, have their source and root in, and derive their principle nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation between men and women.” Many might find themselves disagreeing with the idea that all the selfishness that exists in society has its root cause in gender relations. (What about other factors, such as racism or financial greed?) Mill doesn’t back up this particular claim, but by making such a strong point about the role sexism plays in harming society at large, he nevertheless convincingly demonstrates that promoting gender equality is in service of the greater good.
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Gender Equality for the Greater Good Quotes in The Subjection of Women
[…] 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 […] it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
In the first place, the opinion in favour of the present system, which entirely subordinates the weaker sex to the stronger, rests upon theory only; for there never has been trial made of any other: so that experience, in the sense in which it is vulgarly opposed to theory, cannot be pretended to have pronounced any verdict. And in the second place, the adoption of this system of inequality never was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society. It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man.
Not a word can be said for despotism in the family which cannot be said for political despotism.
It is not true that in all voluntary association between two people, one of them must be absolute master: still less that the law must determine which of them it shall be.
The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues of despotism, but also its vices, are largely nourished […] The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom.
I believe that their disabilities elsewhere are only clung to in order to maintain their subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal.
A woman who joins in any movement which her husband disapproves, makes herself a martyr, with out even being able to be an apostle, for the husband can legally put a stop to her apostleship. Women cannot be expected to devote themselves to the emancipation of women, until men in considerable number are prepared to join with them in the undertaking.
All the selfish propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which exist among mankind, have their source and root in, and derive their principal nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation between men and women.