Subjection of Women

The Subjection of Women was written in 1861 and published eight years later. In the more than one hundred years since its publication, one of the major changes for which John Stuart Mill argued in the essay, the enfranchisement of women, has been accomplished. And yet the essay continues to be relevant and its argument significant today, since the ultimate ideal for which Mill pleaded, the establishment of ‘complete equality in all legal, political, social and domestic relations’ between men and women, is still far from accomplished, and the basic arguments to which Mill addressed himself still dominate discussions about the ‘woman-question’.