The Subjection of Women

Mill’s The Subjection of Women is a persuasive-argument essay that presents the problem of women’s oppression, undermines the opposition via appeals to logic (logos) and emotion (pathos), and concludes with the benefits his solution (gender equality) would provide. As this text was first printed in the 19th century by a small publisher, Mill’s intended audience would have been men like himself: highly educated, upper class, and possessing the power to make substantial changes in society. His formal, academic tone is in keeping with the philosophical treatises of his time, but his progressive ideas about Nature Versus Society and the Gender Hierarchy were far ahead of those held by most of his peers.

The structure of Mill’s essay is highly logical and methodical, progressing from thesis, to counterargument, and finally to impact of solution. Mill begins with a summation of his core claim:

[T]he 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 a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other (2).