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Western Political Thought

Notes rejected the idea of women’s enfranchisement and participation in government on the grounds
that men were immature and would refuse to allow women amidst them. This had nothing to do
with the fact that women lacked either talent or ability.
Bentham found no evidence to support the view that social inequality had its roots in natural
inequality. Natural differences between men and women could not be the basis for oppressing
women. If women appeared less fit for intellectual activities than men, it was because of their
education, which from their early years was devoted to cultivating qualities like modesty, delicacy
and chastity.
Bentham was equally sensitive to the marital and sexual rights of women. He argued for the right
of a woman to obtain a divorce in case of an unhappy marriage. He dismissed the idea of an
irrevocable marriage contract as “absurd and cruel”. Like slaves, women were oppressed and not
treated as autonomous individuals in society.
It was noteworthy that J.S. Mill reiterated a similar sentiment, and equated the position of women
to that of slaves, and in some respects worse than that of slaves. The analogy between slaves and
women appeared throughout Bentham’s writings. In An Introduction, he perceived a close link
between Aristotle’s defence of slavery and his anti-women posture. Clearly Bentham, like Hobbes,
had very little respect for classical antiquity. For Bentham, both women and slaves were oppressed,
and their oppression was justified by prejudice. In 1789 he commented:
As to the Negro and the Woman, were they by some strange accident to overcome the
body of prejudice which opposes their admission with so much force, there could not
be a stronger proof of a degree of merit superior to any that was to be found among
whites and among men.
Bentham also lamented on the limited legal personality that English laws of his time conferred on
women. He desired the removal of these laws, and of treating women’s interests as separate from
those of men, whether father, husband or son. Bentham attacked the practice of legal separation,
for it would condemn persons to the “privations of celibacy” or “to form illicit connections”. He
contended that women had equal claims to happiness as men, if not more, because they were
subject to physiological pains unique to their sex.
Bentham did not regard sexual differences between men and women as innate or natural. He was
equally concerned about the plight of unwed mothers, their feminine delicacy and reputation, and
devised the Sotimion along the lines of the Panopticon. He invented the Nothotropftium to take
care of illegitimate children. He supported abortion and infanticide. He even pleaded for proper
rules that would prevent a stronger mate from maltreating the weaker one in a marital relationship.
He recommended severe punishment for those who perpetrated violence against women. He
regarded prostitution as an evil but ruled out a legal ban as it would be useless and extremely
harmful. He proposed short-term marriages for sailors and soldiers, so that their women would
not be humiliated and their children would not be illegitimate. This was suggested as a remedial
measure and not as a rule.
For Bentham, the question of autonomy—suffrage and divorce are two important issues that have
an intimate link with women’s legal personality. The two belonged to the public and private
spheres respectively of the individual, and were based on the premise that women were aware of
their interests and the means to safeguard them. The right to vote and the right to seek a divorce
guaranteed and secured women’s interests independent of men.
Thus while he himself stopped short of demanding radical changes in the status of women, he
furnished the philosophy that inspired John Stuart Mill to take up the gauntlet for the cause of
women in the Victorian era. Playing the role of gadfly, Bentham wrote, discussed and argued. In
his day the time was not ripe, but he caused another generation to seek for women an end to the
inequities he so eloquently described (Williford 1975: 176).

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