The Subjection of Women

“The legal subordination of one sex to the other, is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that 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.”


JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873) was a prodigious thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age. He is recognized as perhaps the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. The Subjection of Women stresses the paramount importance of total equality between the sexes. This seminal work provides eloquent testimony to the hopes and anxieties of mankind, and offers incisive understandings of what it really means to be free.