En 1869 John Stuart Mill écrit et publie un essai intitulé The Subjection of Women. Le texte commence par une critique du mariage et de la place accordée à l'épouse. Celle-ci est entièrement soumise à son mari et cette situation est incompatible avec l'idéal d'égalité d'une société démocratique. Cette critique est par essence libérale car elle se fonde sur une égalité de tous les ètres humains à la naissance. Pour que l'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes devienne une réalité, l'égalité de droit est une condition nécessaire et suffisante. En effet, garantie par la loi, l'égalité s'imposera de fait à tous et dans toutes les occasions. Un autre point important de l'essai est la déconstruction de l'image de la femme. À l'époque, les femmes sont vues comme naturellement plus faibles et moins douées intellectuellement que les hommes. Mill affirme le rôle prépondérant de la construction sociale dans cette image. Cette image permet de maintenir la situation d'asservissement.

En avance sur son temps, Stuart Mill signe une oeuvre essentielle dans laquelle il défend le droit des femmes. Au-delà de l'engagement féministe, ''l'assuejtissement des femme'' soulève une réflexion qui reste, pres de 150 ans aprés sa premiére publication, d'une actualité brulante.

The Subjection of Women John Stuart Mill - John Stuart Mill wrote the revolutionary essay The Subjection of Women with notes that it was strongly influenced by his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Modern scholars have questioned the legacy that husband constructed for wife in which he has been accused of making exorbitant claims about her intelligence and influence. Despite that revisionist approach, however, The Subjection of Women strongly resembles in both content and character an essay titled The Enfranchisement of Women published by Harriet in 1851. In that essay, she argued in favor of a utilitarian approach to equality which asserted the presence of hostility toward women kept them subjugated at all levels of society. The Subjection of Women was published by in 1869.The Subjection of Women is notable for situating John Stuart Mill at the forefront of the developing notion of a feminist movement. Not exactly called that, those who were daring enough to suggest that women could be the intellectual equal of men were viewed as profoundly radical in their thinking at best and dangerously delusional at worst.Over the course of four chapters, Mill carefully delineates his argument for an innate equality existing between the sexes and then goes on to suggest that this innate equality is being stifled by denial of access to education. Mill also calls on reform to change existing social structures. Overlaying all this a fundamental appeal to the simple morality of the issue. Indeed, Mill makes an caustic appeal to intellectual evil of the immorality of subjugating women as second class citizens due the prejudicial limitations of birth and birth alone.It is within the realm of morality that Mills essay take attains level of truly revolutionary literature. While raising irrefutable scientific points, the appeal cuts most deeply in his assertion that subjection of women is a systemic choice based on scientific ignorance, but also willful disregard of empirical evidence.