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Western Political Thought

Notes

Like Wollstonecraft and Fuller, Mill argued that the dignity of a woman was guaranteed
if she had the power of earning her own living.

Mill has been criticized for recommending that women continue being confined within the family
and home, which implied that they would not be able to develop the sense of justice to sustain
public spirit, and continue to be selfish and narrow in their outlooks (Kramnick 1982: 68; Pateman
1987: 27; Tulloch 1989: 27). In this perception, he could not transcend the nineteenth-century
image of women as primarily homemakers and mothers. His focus was also restricted only to
middle-class women.
Mill questioned the Lockeian separation of paternal and political power, and raised the larger
question about the status of the family. He treated the family as a conventional rather than as a
natural institution, yet he did not regard the family as political. In On Liberty, he solved the
private-public divide and suggested personal judgement as a solution, but did not tackle the other
important public-private dichotomy of the family versus the civil sphere (Tulloch 1989: 8).
Mill’s position got further reinforced by his emphasis on the inherent incompleteness of mid-
nineteenth-century England in particular, and Europe in general, because of the exclusion of
women from the public realm, which made his position very similar to that of Paine, who
highlighted the hollowness of British democracy at the end of the eighteenth century because of
the exclusion of the majority of the people from the political process.
The Subjection of Women, challenged much more than Victorian decorum, however, it
was a radical challenge to one of the most fundamental and precariously held
assumptions about marriage in the modern era, which is that it was a relationship
grounded on the consent of the partners to join their lives. Mill argues to the contrary
that the presumed consent given to women to marry is not, in any real sense, a free
promise, but one socially coerced for the lack of meaningful options (Shanley and
Pateman 1991: 168).
In the Principles of Political Economy, Mill argued that women received low wages because of the
prejudices of society, thereby making them appendages of men and giving the latter a greater
share of “whatever belongs to both”. The second reason for low wages was surplus female labour
for unskilled jobs. Both law and custom prohibited women from seeking any means of livelihood,
other than being a mother and wife.
Mill pointed out that if women were allowed to exercise their faculties freely and fully, the real
beneficiary would be society, for it would be able to draw from a larger pool of mental resources.
If women were properly educated it would not only brighten their dull and impoverished lives,
but also enhance society in general. He understood the important point that equal opportunities in
education meant equal opportunities in employment. If women were denied the latter, it was
because men could not think of them as equals, and only desired to confine them to their domestic
chores. He also pleaded for political rights to vote and to participate in government as administrators
and as rulers.
In the Representative Government, Mill commented that difference of sex could not be the basis of
political rights. Citing examples like Joan of Arc, Elizabeth and Margaret of Austria, he argued
that these women and others had proved that women were as competent as men to participate and
manage political offices. In granting the right to vote, Mill hoped that women would be able to
bring about legislation to remedy domestic violence. He objected to women being prevented by
law to compete and contribute to society. He desired that the subjection of women be ended not
merely by law alone, but by education, opinion, habits, and finally a change in family life itself.

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