SOURCE: “Utilitarianism and Equality: The Subjection of Women,” in Mill on Utilitarianism, Routledge, 1997, pp. 201-15.

[In the following essay, Crisp considers the implications of Mill's utilitarianism with regard to the equality of women.]

UNMASKING THE MORALITY OF MARITAL SLAVERY

… [The] cornerstone of Mill's practical view is the principle of utility. According to this principle, the right act is that which maximizes overall welfare. Some of our acts involve our taking part in the practices of everyday, or ‘customary’, morality. Because my child is less likely to attack others if I encourage her to feel proud at her self-control and kindness, and shame and guilt at her cruelty, it makes utilitarian sense to bring her up to feel these emotions at the proper times, and thus to guide her conduct in a utilitarian direction.

… Mill accepts that some parts of customary morality may well be grounded on the promotion of human welfare (The Subjection of Women: SW 1.5; cf. SW 1.4). These include certain ‘secondary principles’, such as principles of justice, which have been initiated and continued reflectively, and tested against alternatives. Other parts of customary morality, however, such as what he saw as the common readiness to permit interference with individuals for their own good, he finds abhorrent, and wishes to see replaced. In other words, the mere fact that a certain moral principle is widely accepted does not justify it. Custom itself has no authority.

Another area in which Mill thinks the customary morality of his day is in need of radical reform concerns the relations between the sexes. Here Mill recognized that he had a great battle on his hands, and it was one he fought throughout his life, from the time he was arrested at the age of 17 for handing out leaflets on contraception until the final period of his life, in which he attempted in Parliament to extend suffrage to women. The battle, as he sees it, is against custom, and the intense and irrational feelings which protect it (SW 1.2). One of Mill's primary tasks in The Subjection of Women is to reveal the reality of oppression behind the genteel appearance of Victorian chivalry:

It was inevitable that this one case of a social relation grounded on force, would survive through generations of institutions grounded on equal justice, an almost solitary exception to the general character of their laws and customs; but which, so long as it does not proclaim its own origin, and as discussion has not brought out its true character, is not felt to jar with modern civilization, any more than domestic slavery among the Greeks jarred with their notion of themselves as a free people.

(SW 1.6)

What, then, was the origin of the relative positions of men and women? According to Mill, fully to understand this requires one to grasp the history of morality itself, so that one can see how those relations are still governed by a morality which has in other areas of life become obsolete.

Mill suggests that in the very earliest human societies each woman, because of her physical weakness and sexual attractiveness, would be enslaved to a man. Out of this primitive Hobbesian state of nature developed legal systems which merely legitimized these ownership relations:

Slavery, from being a mere affair of force between the master and the slave, became regularized and a matter of compact among the masters, who, binding themselves to one another for common protection, guaranteed by their collective strength the private possessions of each, including his slaves.

(SW 1.5)

Primitive slavery, then, is the source of the inequality of women. And in the legitimation of this primitive relation is to be found the origin of social or legal obligation: those who disobeyed the ‘law of force’ were thought guilty of the most serious crime, and duly punished with great cruelty (SW 1. 7). Here we must not forget Mill's brief but important account of morality's origin in the desire to punish in Utilitarianism 5.14.

Gradually, a certain sense of obligation developed in some superiors towards some inferiors (though not slaves), as the result of the development of consciences which motivated the keeping, from a sense of duty, of promises originally made for convenience. This evolution out of the pure law of force was the beginning of what we might recognize as a morality:

[T]he banishment of that primitive law even from so narrow a field, commenced the regeneration of human nature, by giving birth to sentiments of which experience soon demonstrated the immense value even for material interests, and which thenceforward only required to be enlarged, not created.

(SW 1.7)

Then the view arose among the Stoics, and was taken up in Christianity, that there are obligations to slaves (SW 1.7; cf. SW 2.12). Though not widely adopted, this was the clearest example of a new stage in morality—the morality of chivalry, in which the strong would be praised for refraining from oppressing the weak (SW 2.12).

CHIVALRY AND JUSTICE

Women, in fact, had from very early times played a rôle in creating the conditions for the morality of chivalry (SW 4.8). Because of women's vulnerability, they encouraged men not to be violent, and because of female weakness, to settle disputes by non-violent means. Women did not, however, wish their men to be cowards, because, after all, they themselves needed protection. So courage was always encouraged in sons by their mothers, and in young men by their female lovers. A possessor of military virtue would also be admired by other men, and such admiration would provide another opportunity of entry into the affections of women. The morality of chivalry, then, consists in an apparently odd mix of militarism and gentleness, especially towards women, who used their sexual power to their best advantage.

The morality of chivalry, however, is a thing of the past (SW 4.9). The individualism of the warrior has been replaced by cooperation in business and industry: ‘The main foundations of the moral life of modern times must be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of every other, and the ability of each to take care of himself’ (SW 4.9).

Chivalry was not entirely successful. It depended on praise rather than blame and punishment, and for that reason left untouched the behaviour of the majority, unimpressed by the rewards of honour. With the morality of justice, society has the collective means to enforce decency on the part of the strong without relying on their higher feelings, and indeed it has done so—except as regards the relation of women and men. The behaviour of most men towards most women is governed not by the morality of justice, nor even the morality of chivalry, but the morality of submission—the law of force.

The morality of justice is grounded on the equality of human beings. One's birth does not determine rigidly the course one's life must take; rather one is free to employ the talents one has in whatever career one wishes (SW 1.13; SW 4.5). And this freedom … protects autonomy, one of the most important sources of welfare. It is recognized both as an injustice to the individuals concerned, and as damaging to the interests of society as a whole, to place needless obstacles in the way of individual advancement: ‘Nobody thinks it necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed man shall be a blacksmith.’

There is clearly some hyperbole in Mill's claims about the morality of justice, and indeed he does become more sanguine when reflecting upon the constraints placed on its development in society by the present relations of the sexes. But it is no doubt true that Mill is writing at a time in which sexual inequality is not widely recognized as a serious injustice. What is Mill's explanation?

One main cause is the continuing physical weakness of women (SW 1.6). Men have nothing to fear from women, and so have seen no good reason to concede ground to them. Mill notes that less than forty years before the publication of The Subjection of Women, British citizens could own other human beings, and that absolute monarchy or military despotism as systems of government had only recently begun to decline in Europe. ‘Such is the power of an established system’ (SW 1.8). Since every man has the advantage of despotism over those closest to him, is it any wonder that he has not resigned his power?

More support for the customary morality of sexism, Mill believes, is provided by the sentiments and feelings (SW 1.2). Given that men have inculcated in women duties of submission and self-abnegation (SW 1.11), it is no surprise that many women do not desire any reform.

But Mill realizes that many women have not been taken in (SW 1.10). Many women complain of sexism in their writings, and are petitioning vociferously for the vote and for education. In addition, even more women, though they do not complain of men as a whole, resent the tyranny of their own husband. Yet more would complain if the hold of husbands over wives were not so tight.

Mill believes that wives are in a position of slavery (SW 2.1). His hope is that once this is recognized, radical changes will follow. What those changes will be, and how they are to come about, we must now begin to consider.

MARRIAGE, EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND THE LIBERATION OF WOMEN

Mill is appalled by the position of women in his society. He is particularly concerned by the nature of marriage, which he sees women as being coerced into by the lack of any serious alternative (SW 1.25). The history of marriage as he describes it is part of the history of morality. It has its origin, as did ordinary slavery, in the law of force, and women are owned either by their husbands or by their fathers (SW 2.1). A woman has no legal rights against her husband, who has literal sovereignty over her; under ‘the old laws of England’, murder of a husband had been considered high treason, the penalty being death by burning. Even now, Mill notes, a woman's avowal of obedience at the altar is upheld by the law, her property passing to her husband (but not vice versa). A woman has no time of her own; she is constantly at her husband's beck and call. Nor does she have any rights over her body; there is no crime of rape within marriage in the law of England. The husband has legal rights over the children, and most women have no real opportunity of escaping the tyranny of their husbands.

Sexism, of course, is not confined to the private sphere. Here Mill finds it unnecessary to go into detail (SW 3.1), since it is an undeniable fact that women are prohibited from applying for places at university, and from the ‘greater number of lucrative occupations, and from almost all high social functions’. In particular, of course, women can neither vote nor stand for parliament (SW 3.2).

What is to be done? Mill says that the object of The Subjection of Women is to advocate ‘a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other’ (SW 1.1). Marriage should be on equal conditions (SW 1.25). As a voluntary association, it should be governed jointly, with a division of powers between wife and husband analogous to that between partners in a business (SW 2.7). Women should of course be given the vote, and be allowed admittance to the same positions in government, business and so on as men.

Mill's views, especially those on marriage, were considered dangerously radical even by most of those otherwise sympathetic to him. James Fitzjames Stephen, one of Mill's ablest critics, thought his position on female equality to be verging on the indecent (Stephen 1874: 134-5). It is no surprise, therefore, that Mill delayed the publication of the book, and strove to avoid particularly delicate issues such as divorce (SW 2.1).¹

Nevertheless, a common criticism of Mill by modern writers is that he does not go far enough. Mill can be seen at best as a proponent of the rights of women, not their liberation (see e.g. Goldstein 1980). He advocates mere equality of opportunity for women, not seeing that the social conditioning of women, of which he was so aware, would prevent the majority's taking up any opportunities made available to them.

This criticism might be thought a little unfair to Mill. We know that he considers both law and customary morality to be important social tools for the maximizing of welfare, so it is to be expected that he will concentrate on reform within these institutions as a means to progress. He is quite aware of the indoctrination in women by society of exaggerated views about the moral and sexual importance of female meekness and submissiveness (SW 1.11). He believes, however, that equality in law and customary morality will result in important changes in the nature of the family and the relationships within it, and indeed in the character of society at large:

The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom … What is needed is, that it should be a school of sympathy in equality, of living together in love, without power on the side or obedience on the other. This it ought to be between the parents. It would then be an exercise of those virtues which each requires to fit them for all other association, and a model to the children of the feelings and conduct which their temporary training by means of obedience is designed to render habitual.

(SW 2.12)

Removing sexual discrimination would also allow women ‘a life of rational freedom’ (SW 4.19). Here Mill speaks of the ‘liberation’ of women, and he is clearly to be understood as speaking of women's being not only uncoerced by men, but positively free to make for themselves important decisions about the shape of their lives.

So Mill is concerned with the liberation of women, and with enabling them to exercise equal rights, not merely to possess them. And there is much in what he says. Were most in society, whether female or male, to begin to see women as the legal and moral equals of men in both private and public spheres, and not to view sex as relevant where it clearly is not, then the position of women would be greatly advanced. Nevertheless, as I shall show in the next section, the modern objection to Mill I have been discussing is not completely off target.

MILL'S EMPIRICISM AND THE POWER OF IDEOLOGY

Mill recognizes the authority of custom. His error, perhaps, is not to see how entrenched are the views of women in modern society. In an early essay, Mill had claimed that there was no natural inequality between the sexes, except perhaps in physical strength (O 21.42). In The Subjection of Women, Mill is more circumspect. The debates about the nature of women raged during his day as they do in ours, and he was concerned to sidestep them. As a strict empiricist, ready only to accept the evidence of experience, Mill says that we can know nothing of the nature of women, other than, presumably because we are aware of the forces of distortion at work, that their present state is not the natural one (SW 1.18). History teaches us of the great openness of human beings to external influence (SW 1.19). Domination has always appeared natural, and indeed the unnatural is little more to most people than what is unusual (SW 1.9). Views of what is natural vary wildly (SW 1.9; SW 3.14). Women themselves have been permitted to say little of their own experience, and frankness is anyway hardly a common quality in unequal relationships (SW 1.21). But, Mill says, from the moral point of view this is all by the by: ‘For, according to all the principles involved in modern society, the question rests with women themselves—to be decided by their own experience, and by the use of their own faculties' (SW 1.23).

Unfortunately, however, in speaking of women as they are at present, Mill is less careful. While attempting to explain why women should be permitted to enter business and public life, Mill offers a set of generalizations about women's capacities which are unsupported in just the way he elsewhere criticizes (SW 3.8-13). Women are said to be more practical than men, and to possess ‘intuition’ and a sensitivity to particular facts instead of the male capacity to reason abstractly. They tend to be more nervous, their minds more mobile than men’s, but less able to concentrate.

Admittedly Mill takes pains to stress that he is not making claims about the universal nature of women, but only women as they are. Nevertheless, his ‘mere empirical generalizations, framed, without philosophy or analysis' (SW 3.14) not only make Mill the first to enter the quagmire of the sameness/difference debate which concerns many contemporary feminists, but suggest that it was perhaps fortunate that time did not permit him to carry out the programme of ‘ethology’ he describes at the end of the System of Logic. Whether Mill's claims be true or false, they are both irrelevant to the practicalities of his argument and based on no more evidence than claims about the nature of women as, say, instinctively maternal or sexually insatiable.

Even worse, Mill allows himself to express opinions about which choices women should make once liberated, and they are somewhat conservative:

In an otherwise just state of things, it is not … a desirable custom, that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income of the family … Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be understood that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions.

(SW 2.16)

One might think Mill says these things merely to ingratiate himself with his sexist audience, and so perhaps win them over to a more liberal position (compare his comments on Muslims and on common decency in On Liberty). But this is probably not the case. Mill believed that mothers were closer to children than their fathers (‘Letter to Hooker’ (1869) 17.1640), and does not raise the possibility that men could be involved in the raising of children (SW 3.1).

Mill's mistake is not just to generalize about women without good evidence when he has explicitly warned against so doing. He makes two further errors analogous to some I [have elsewhere] outlined in On Liberty. … [Concerning that] discussion of our attitude to self-regarding faults in On Liberty, Mill failed to see that social despotism might be based on the criticism of others which he permitted. Here, he fails to note that, if it is widely believed that women should raise children and not work, this will create an atmosphere in which it is difficult for women to make a free choice. Other options may just not occur to them, and there may be social pressure to conform. Further, in the passage of On Liberty on self-regarding faults, Mill seems temporarily unaware not only of the authority of custom, but also of the authority of his own text. The same is true in The Subjection of Women. By advocating a domestic rôle for women, Mill was playing into the hands of those sexists who wished to prevent women from competing on equal terms with men by any means available.

The tension in Mill's writing on women demonstrates the power of the very ideology he attempted to reveal. On the one hand, he sees very clearly the intricate methods of subjection employed by men against women over the ages. On the other, he fails to recognize that he himself has been taken in by the myth that the rôle of the vast majority of women is to raise children, along with other myths, such as that the age of a husband, or the fact that he earns money, entitles him to a greater say in marriage (SW 2.9).

These blemishes, however, should not blind us to the force and eloquence of Mill's case for the equality of women. He does anyway allow that ‘the utmost latitude ought to exist for the adaptation of general rules to individual suitabilities' (SW 2.16). And we find in his spelling out of the morality of justice a position which not only provides a resource for modifying his own position on child-rearing but is still important in debates about sexual equality:

[I]t is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of authority to fix beforehand, on some general presumption, that certain persons are not fit to do certain things. It is now thoroughly known and admitted that if some such presumptions exist, no such presumption is infallible. Even if it be well grounded in a majority of cases, which it is very likely not to be, there will be a minority of exceptional cases in which it does not hold: and in those it is both an injustice to the individuals, and a detriment to society, to place barriers in the way of their using their faculties for their own benefit and for that of others. In the cases, on the other hand, in which the unfitness is real, the ordinary motives of human conduct will on the whole suffice to prevent the incompetent person from making, or from persisting in, the attempt.

(SW 1.13; cf. SW 3.1)

In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a pioneer of women's liberation in America, wrote to Mill concerning his book:

I lay the book down with a peace and joy I never felt before, for it is the first response from any man to show he is capable of seeing and feeling all the nice shades and degrees of women's wrongs and the central point of her weakness and degradation.

(Lutz 1940: 171-2; cited in Rossi 1970: 62)

In the final section of this essay, let me show how Mill employed the theory he had developed in Utilitarianism and On Liberty to argue for women's equality.

THE BENEFITS OF REFORM

Mill advocates that, rather than allow the question of women's position in society to be decided by prevailing custom, one should think of it

as a question of justice and expediency: the decision on this, as on any of the other social arrangements of mankind, depending on what an enlightened estimate of tendencies and consequences may show to be the most advantageous to humanity in general, without distinction of sex.

(SW 1.17)

The morality of justice, then, is the customary morality which Mill believes suits modernity. In the circumstances in which we find ourselves, equality is to govern our relations with one another, because in this way human welfare will be best promoted.

In his discussion of justice in Utilitarianism, Mill suggests that there is more disagreement about equality than about any other component of justice (5.10). It is clear, however, what he means by equality between the sexes: a substantive equality of rights, allied with an attitude of equality of respect by each citizen towards every other, male or female. Equality for Mill is closely tied to desert: ‘We should treat all equally well (when no higher duty forbids) who have deserved equally well of us' (5.36). And he is acutely aware, as we shall see below, of the distress caused to women who saw that the arrangements in their society prevented their exercising their talents as they wished.

What, then, would be the consequences of equality? The most important, of course, would be for women. First, they would be relieved from the terrible suffering inflicted by many husbands upon their wives (SW 2.1; SW 4.2). Mill, a husband himself, is of course aware that not all husbands are tyrants; but he is equally, and painfully, aware of the level of violence against women in the home and the lack of protection offered them by society and the law. Nor is it any surprise that women love their husbands whether they batter them or not: similar attachments were forged between slave and master in Greece and Rome.

Secondly, women might find a positive benefit in a marriage based on equality (SW 4.15-18). There might be far greater similarity in interests, tastes, wishes and inclinations, and a consequent decrease in painful disagreement. Mill compares the ideal marriage to friendship, in which association and sympathy enable each partner to enrich himself or herself through insight into the other's view of the world. There is little doubt that Mill is speaking here from the experience of his relationship with Harriet Taylor, and, given his view of sexual intercourse as an ‘animal function’ (SW 2.1), it is to be expected that he emphasize the non-sexual aspect of the marriage relationship.

Thirdly, and no less importantly, Mill's reforms would allow women a life of rational freedom in place of one of subjection to the will of men (SW 4.19-20). Here we see that Mill's case depends not only on Utilitarianism, and the conceptions of justice and human welfare there developed, but on the understanding of liberty and individuality worked out in On Liberty. Mill argues that, after food and clothing, freedom is the most important want of any human being. Mill asks his reader not to concentrate on how much freedom matters to others, but on how much it matters to the reader themselves—and then to base their conclusions about others on their own case:

Whatever has been said or written, from the time of Herodotus to the present, of the ennobling influence of free government—the nerve and spring which it gives to all the faculties, the larger and higher objects which it presents to the intellect and feelings, the more unselfish public spirit, and calmer and broader views of duty, that it engenders, and the generally loftier platform on which it elevates the individual as a moral, spiritual, and social being—is every particle as true of women as of men. Are these things no important part of individual happiness?

(SW 4.20)

The experience of freely running one's own life, then, is a central component of human welfare. Mill stresses two further elements which women will be able to incorporate in their lives through exercising this freedom: achievement, and the enjoyment of contemplating it (SW 4.21-2). As we have seen, Mill believes women should remain in the home, so his proposals as he conceives them concern mainly women who have brought up a family. He suggests that the only active outlet available to such women at present is charity, in which the effect is merely to remove the capacity for autonomy from those who are helped (SW 4.11). Not only could women achieve in the spheres in which men currently achieve, but they could enjoy their achievement, something again ‘vitally important to the happiness of human beings’, and be spared the undeserved disappointment and dissatisfaction of a wasted life.

Mill realizes that he cannot rest his case on the advantages of equality to women alone. Some benefits, he argues, will accrue to men. Like women, they will be able to enjoy a marriage of friendship with an equal. And there will be less obvious improvements to their position. For example, a man who wishes to live his life according to his own conscience and in accordance with the truth as he sees it will be able to do so, even if his opinions are at odds with those of the masses (SW 4.13-14; cf. S 2.5). At present, he would probably not attempt it, because of the social sacrifice he would be imposing on his family: ‘Whoever has a wife and children has given hostages to Mrs Grundy.’² Mill was quite aware of the effects of social ostracism after the way he and Mrs Taylor were treated by society at large.

But the main advantages for men will come from those to society as a whole. Society will benefit from the constructive, as opposed to the mischievous, influence of women (SW 4.8-12, 20). At present, women denied liberty seek whatever power they can, without regard for its wider social implications. Sheer power depraves, whether it be held by a woman or a man. With equality, not only will women's interests move beyond the sphere of Mrs Grundy, but they will extend to combine the virtues of gentleness with a disinterested concern for society at large.

Discrimination is inefficient, resulting in the failure to realize or use the potential of those discriminated against (SW 1.13-14, 24; SW 3.1; SW 4.6-7). The equal education of women and their entry into professions previously prohibited to them would make available huge mental resources, as well as spur men to great competition.

Equal education would also affect the characters of both men and women: women would become more assertive, men more self-sacrificial (SW 2.10). And, as we saw above, there would be other effects on the morality of society, emerging from the family as a ‘school of sympathy in equality’ (SW 2.12). Present institutions result in men's becoming ‘depraved’ (SW 2.13; cf. SW 2.4). Mill is quite adamant about this: ‘All the selfish propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which exist among mankind, have their source and root in, and derive their principal nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation between men and women’ (SW 4.4).

It might be thought that Mill is exaggerating. Certainly he is again sticking his neck out further than his empiricism might allow. But it is not implausible to suggest that were sexism to be rooted out, for the right reasons, from the family at all levels, many of those brought up within the institution would live up to the morality of justice elsewhere: ‘Though the truth may not be felt or generally acknowledged for generations to come, the only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals' (SW 2.12).

The vision of a society in which all are granted the rights and respect they deserve is at the heart of the liberalism and egalitarianism which Mill's act utilitarianism supported. That vision is as important now as it ever was, and modern utilitarians have stressed that the boundaries of such a society should extend to include not only women, but human beings in all countries, and indeed non-human animals. Because of the depressing fact that Mill's ideal remains in many respects as distant as it did in his time, his moral and political writings, all of which must be read in the light of Utilitarianism, will rightly remain at the centre of moral and political debate for many years to come.

Notes

1. A tricky subject for him anyway, given his relationship with Mrs Taylor: see ch. 1.

2. Mrs Grundy, in Thomas Morton's Speed the Plough (1798), represents a narrow-minded sense of propriety.