The Subjection of Women

Context and Aims

The Subjection of Women (1869) is a major work of liberal feminist philosophy by John Stuart Mill, written in close intellectual collaboration with Harriet Taylor Mill. Emerging from mid-19th-century debates about suffrage, marriage law, and property rights, the essay applies Mill’s broader commitments to liberty, equality before the law, and utilitarian moral theory to the question of women’s social and legal status.

Mill’s stated aim is to examine “the legal subordination of one sex to the other” and to argue that this arrangement is inherently wrong and a serious obstacle to human improvement. He treats the status of women as analogous to other forms of despotism he had criticized elsewhere, maintaining that inherited power relations should be tested by rational argument and evidence, not accepted by custom.

Central Arguments

Mill’s case unfolds across four chapters and combines historical, moral, psychological, and political analysis.

1. Subordination as a relic of force

Mill claims that the existing legal and social subordination of women is a historical survival of an age when physical strength determined social dominance. For him, the marriage relation in particular resembles a “school of despotism,” in which men are legally privileged and women expected to obey. This arrangement, he argues, is not grounded in rational justification but in inherited habits of mind and entrenched custom.

2. The principle of equality

A central claim is that any hierarchy that assigns rights and opportunities based on sex rather than individual merit is unjust and socially harmful. Mill proposes that the default political principle should be equality of rights and opportunities, with distinctions allowed only when they can be defended by strong, public reasons. Since no such reasons can be given for permanent male dominance, the subjection of women should be abolished.

He argues that justice requires that women have access to:

• Equal civil and political rights, including the franchise
• Equal educational opportunities
• Free choice of occupation and profession
• Legal equality in marriage, including property rights and guardianship of children

3. Freedom, character, and individuality

Mill further contends that subordination damages both women and men. Women, raised to dependence and obedience, are prevented from developing their individuality, talents, and moral autonomy. Their apparent “nature,” he suggests, is largely a product of systematic socialization, not innate character. Because no one has seen women educated and free on equal terms, claims about a fixed female nature are, in his view, empirically unfounded.

For men, the power to command within the household fosters habits of domination and undermines their capacity for relations based on equality and mutual respect. Mill sees a genuinely companionate marriage—a voluntary partnership between equals—as morally superior and socially beneficial.

4. Utility and social progress

Drawing on his utilitarianism, Mill argues that ending women’s subordination would maximize overall happiness. A society that restricts half its population to narrow domestic roles wastes intellectual and moral resources. Greater participation of women in public and economic life, he believes, would improve decision-making, moral standards, and social institutions. He treats the emancipation of women as a condition for broader social and moral progress.

Criticisms and Legacy

From its publication, The Subjection of Women attracted controversy. Contemporary critics often defended traditional gender roles as natural or divinely ordained, accused Mill of undermining the family, or doubted women’s capacity for public life. Others objected that Mill underestimated women’s emotional and domestic contributions, or that he overemphasized individual rights at the expense of social cohesion.

Later feminist and philosophical critiques have taken several forms:

• Liberal individualism: Some argue that Mill’s focus on formal legal equality and individual rights neglects deeper structural, cultural, and economic sources of gender inequality.
• Nature and difference: Critics contend that Mill largely treats gender differences as suspect or socially constructed, leaving little room for positive valuation of gendered experiences or identities.
• Class and race limitations: Many note that Mill writes primarily with middle-class, often implicitly white, women in view and does not systematically address how gender intersects with class, race, and empire.
• Marriage and the family: Some argue that Mill still presupposes a relatively traditional family form, even as he seeks to democratize it; others see his vision of companionate marriage as a radical departure from 19th-century norms.

Despite such criticisms, the work has been highly influential. It helped supply philosophical foundations for the women’s suffrage movement, informed early debates on marriage and property law reform, and provided a key text for first-wave feminism. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has remained central in discussions of liberal feminism, the meaning of equality, and the critique of gender-based hierarchy.

Today, The Subjection of Women is widely studied both as a historical document of Victorian feminist thought and as a systematic philosophical defense of gender equality. It continues to be read alongside Mill’s On Liberty and Utilitarianism as part of a broader project to extend principles of freedom and equality to all members of society, challenging inherited forms of domination in both public and private life.