The Subjection of Women

1869. John Stuart Mill is one of the foremost representatives of utilitarian thought as well as one of the most influential of nineteenth century liberals. Influenced by his wife, Harriet Taylor, Mill developed a very humane version of utilitarianism that was sympathetic to women's rights, labor unions, proportional representation, and other liberal themes. The object of this essay is to explain that the principle that regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes, the legal subordination of one sex to the other, is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that 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. See the many other works by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.