Political Philosophy

The Subjection of Women

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John Stuart Mill

1869

Written in 1861 and published in 1869, this is the most sustained and intellectually rigorous liberal argument for the equality of the sexes produced in the nineteenth century. Mill argues that the legal subordination of women to men is wrong in principle and harmful in practice, that it rests on custom and prejudice rather than evidence, and that its abolition would benefit men and women alike and enlarge the moral resources of the entire species. The work addresses marriage, education, the professions, and the exercise of political power, drawing on the same utilitarian and liberal principles that animate all Mill's social philosophy.