John Stuart Mill is one of the most significant figures in the history of classical liberal thought, and the argument he makes about women’s rights in The Subjection of Women is deeply rooted in liberal values of freedom, individualism, choice, and consent. Mill denounces the restrictions placed on women’s freedom and argues that gender equality is essential to modern liberal democracy. He successfully proves that liberalism must include women’s rights by arguing that it is hypocritical and contradictory to cherish individual rights and freedoms while only allocating those rights and freedoms to a subsection of the population (men).
While Mill anticipates skepticism among readers about the issue of gender equality, he presupposes that they might be more sympathetic to the importance of liberal values in general. He specifically appeals to the liberal concepts of freedom, equality, and individualism to persuade the reader that women should have the same rights and freedoms granted to men. One of the principles that Mill emphasizes in The Subjection of Women is meritocracy: before the advancement of liberal ideals, the position a person was born into usually dictated the role they had in life. For example, the son of a peasant would be a peasant, while the son of a lord would be a lord. Liberalism, however, asserts that the social position a person was born into shouldn’t limit what they can achieve. Mill acknowledges that different people have different capabilities, but he argues that “[…] freedom of individual choice is now known to be the only thing which procures the adoption of the best processes, and throws each operation into the hands of those who are best qualified for it.” This means that it is best for everyone if every professional or political position is open to all, as this will give the best chance that it is given to the most-qualified candidate. Mill then explains, “[…] we ought […] not to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy, any more than to be born black instead of white, or a commoner instead of a nobleman, shall decide the person’s position through all life.” If people accept that principles of meritocracy and individual choice are best for society, then surely this should apply to women as well.
Another liberal principle that Mill emphasizes is that of consent. He argues that if women are to be free, this doesn’t just mean that they are not prevented from doing things—it also means they should not be forced to do anything they do not want to do. He writes that until “a late period in European history,” women were often forced into marriage. Even though the church technically required a woman’s consent to marry, there was little care given to checking whether this was true consent or if she had been coerced. Once married, husbands had total control of their wives; women had no legal rights. Mill denounces this system as a violation of women’s inherent rights as individuals. He also argues that it creates a system of “despotism” within the family that mirrors political tyranny—and readers are likely to agree that totalitarian rule is bad. In this way, Mill helps persuade readers that broader social and political problems are partially rooted in the oppression of women, and that gender equality would therefore create a better society.
By drawing a connection between liberal principles and women’s rights, Mill makes his argument more appealing to those who might be skeptical about women’s rights. However, at the same time, he makes his argument vulnerable to criticisms of liberalism itself and its applicability to the issue of gender. For example, Mill’s arguments about meritocracy emphasize that women who are talented and intelligent should be entitled to the same positions as men. However, one could argue that this argument favors upper-class white women, who—like upper-class white men—are more likely to have access to education and networks that allow them to gain access to power. Moreover, some might argue that Mill’s consideration of the way in which women are prevented from exercising the liberal values of freedom, choice, and consent ignores the way in which gender also restricts men’s autonomy. At the time Mill was writing, men were prevented from devoting their lives to parenthood and domesticity, as these were considered firmly in the domain of womanhood and inappropriate for men. One could argue that in a truly liberal society, it would be just as important for men to feel free to engage in “feminine” activities as it would be for women to be able to enter the workforce and hold political power. There is perhaps an extent to which Mill exercises the same hypocrisy that he accuses others of by not seeing how men’s rights and freedoms are also restricted on account of their gender.
Overall, Mill argues that a liberal society that oppresses women is not really liberal at all. Not only is it hypocritical and thus morally unjust to extend liberal values only to men, but doing so negatively impacts society, as it prevents women from realizing their potential and making positive contributions to the world. It is on these terms that Mill proves that any modern, liberal society must support the individual rights and freedoms of women.
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Liberalism and Women’s Rights 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.
But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be a natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race.
All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds.
What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favour of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favour of men should be recalled. If women have a greater natural inclination for some things than for others, there is no need of laws or social inculcation to make the majority of them do the former in preference to the latter.
Meanwhile the wife is the actual bondservant of her husband: no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called […] She can do no act whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his. In this respect the wife’s position under the common law of England is worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries: by the Roman law, for example, a slave might have his peculium, which to a certain extent the law guaranteed to him for his exclusive use.
I am far from pretending that wives are in general no better treated than slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is. Hardly any slave, except one immediately attached to the master’s person, is a slave at all hours and all minutes; in general he has, like a soldier, his fixed task, and when it is done, or when he is off duty, he disposes, within certain limits, of his own time, and has a family life into which the master rarely intrudes.
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.
The less fit a man is for the possession of power—the less likely to be allowed to exercise it over any person with that person’s voluntary consent—the more does he hug himself in the consciousness of the power the law gives him, exact its legal rights to the utmost point which custom (the custom of men like himself) will tolerate, and take pleasure in using the power, merely to enliven the agreeable sense of possessing it.
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.
In the present day, power holds a smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do so for their own good: accordingly, when anything is forbidden to women, it is thought necessary to say, and desirable to believe, that they are incapable of doing it, and that they depart from their real path of success and happiness when they aspire to it.
There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
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.
