John Stuart Mill Arguments on Legal Equality to Women

Introduction

God has created men and women equally. But variegated issues that exist in our society give unequal status to men and women. There are scores of instances that prove behavior of society which predict that women are inferior creature. Women always have been treated by society as an inferior being. Males have always dominated the society and have treated women as their subordinates. But, things have changed now. A woman of today's world knows her value. She is capable of doing anything to prove her mettle. The notion that women are slave to their men has been jettisoned now. With her studious effort and remarkable achievements women have achieved a status that demands respect and integrity. On this issue a number of writers have written plethora of material. The aim and objective of this paper is also to take into account one of the eminent writer's work. This paper aims to talk about the arguments that John Stuart Mill has presented in his book “Subjection of women”.

Subjection of Women and Stuart's Arguments

The widower's earlier collaboration with his wife continued to impact his visions of equality for women. When Harriet Mill wrote "The Enfranchisement of Women" (1851), she influenced his philosophy in The Subjection of Women (1869), a radical social document that Mill published with the aid of his stepdaughter, the activist Helen Taylor. Mill lives in an era when women had no rights. They were not allowed to pursue higher education and they used to live their lives under the spotlight of their husbands. At the outset he declares wrong the "legal subordination of one sex to the other" (Mill, 1997, 1). The text, a pillar of British feminism, attacks political policy that denies women the vote and the rights to property and custody of their children (Mill, pp. 106).

With the usage of impervious logic and convincing rhetoric Mill argues that the legal system of Great Britain regarded women as enslaved. In the opinion of Mill, when the brutal forces transformed into power and law then at that time the forces and coerced subservience of women to men originated long ago. While talking about the women freedom and rights Mill mentions that if we take into consideration the nub or the core of the English Constitution then it would be revealed to us that it is based on the intellectual phenomena of ...