Mill’s Feminism And Its Influences

As the19th century great statesman, thinker and reformer. Mill inherited the basic beliefs about reason, freedom, equality of Enlightenment thinkers, and achieved some development on the basis of Enlightenment. He published many works, and The Subjection of Women separated Mill from the hypothesis of male dominance in traditional liberalism. Mill developed his feminist theory in liberalism framework. He thought women could be rational and there were no other differences except biological differences between men and women. As long as giving women equal education with male, women could be rational thinking as men did. With utilitarianism as a weapon, Mill demonstrated that it would have a great benefit by giving women the equal right to education, employment and suffrage with men. Mill thought only by achieving gender equality can we realize the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In addition, Mill was one of the founders of world’s first women’s political participation of the promotion. He struggled for British women’s suffrage and made significant contribution to the acquirement of the women’s suffrage of British and American. However, due to the restrictions of the class and times, Mill’s feminism inevitably had its own limitations, including rational male perspective, theory of equivalent equality, representing the interests of the bourgeois white women, the distinction between the private areas and public areas, which made Mill’s feminist theory reviled. Therefore, The Subjection of Women based, this article discusses Mill’s feminism from its background, philosophical basis, basic opinions and the impact of both at home and abroad, hoping to accurately present the fight for women’s rights of Mill.