The subjection of women

The subjection of women ensues with the rebellious proposition, “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 principle of perfect e quality>. Mill’s indication for the legal subjugation of women was the mid 19^th Century English law of the marriage contract. This law impaired married women of holding any property in their own name and it too deprived them of those property gifted by their parent by transferring them to their husbands. Unless she is not separated this is a rigorous and costly procedure, her husbandwaw entitled to her incomes. The law empowered only the father and not the mother as the legal guardian of a couple’s child. Mill too exemplified the lawlessness on marital rape to substantiate the injustice endured by the English women then.

Mill was puzzled by the contradiction when he found that when in other fields the principles of liberty and e quality were upheld, they    were not applied to the plight of women. The first argument for women’s inequality reflected by Mill was that since this habitual performance was exercised since time immemorial there is no justification for its continuity because if slavery being a time long social practice was done away with, why not women’s inequality?

The second argument was established on women’s natural dispositions which were seen as inferior to men which Mill negated by replying that women’s inequality based as natural differences were a consequence of socialization. He referred to European queens and Hindu princesses in proving for the worthiness of women showing exceptional talent for political leadership.

The third argument nullified by Mill was that women’s subservience was just in view of its women’s voluntary acceptance to which Mill indicated that the claim was wrong since many women remonstrated against their inequality through written tracts or coming out in streets of London.

The fourth argument to which Mill objected to was the primacy of the male head of the family in decision making by reasoning out that husband and wife being both adults this right should not be reserved solely by the male.

Mill wrote “There are many persons for whom it is not enough that the inequality has no just or legitimate defense; they require to be told what express advantage would be obtained by abolishing it”.

The first benefit entails that the family would no more be “a school of despotism”. Mill holds that since patriarchal families teach all its members to lead live in hierarchical relationships, power is accumulated in the male head such a unit is an antiquated institution in modern democratic politics where equality is endued to all.

One more advantage is in its “doubling of the mass of mental faculties” available to society in a way that society would be favored by additional number of doctors, engineers and scientists promoting healthy competition among the sexes to outperform the another. Third, in an egalitarian environment women would be able to assert their opinion freely and independently and finally by assuming equal rights to women, their happiness would be increased manifold which would perfect and complete the utilitarian principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.

Individual Liberty

Protection of individual liberty is important because in making choices individual exert several faculties – “The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used…He who choose his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. HE must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision”.

Mill elucidated and particularized his stance on liberty by guarding three particular liberties, the liberty of thought and expression along with the liberty of speaking and publishing, the liberty of action and that of association.

Mill’s vision was betterment – he sought individuals to adherently edify themselves morally, mentally and materially. It was to this ideal that he   saw individual liberty as instrumental. “The only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals”.