On Mill's Feminism

John Mill is generally recognized as a master of liberalism and utilitarianism,but he is also a representative of the early liberal feminist school and the author of "women's submissive status".His feminist thought has a profound impact on later generations,and is known as the "father of modern feminism".Scholars have long ignored mill's contribution to the development of feminism,and the solution of women's problems is unavoidable in the development of any country.The purpose of this paper is to reevaluate the historical value of mill's feminist thought,and to get the Enlightenment of solving the contemporary women's problems in China.In this paper,the Marxist discipline as the background,mainly combed mill's achievements in the history of women's rights.This paper mainly analyzes mill's feminist thought from three dimensions.This paper focuses on the analysis of the philosophical foundation,the main content and the Chinese enlightenment behind the feminist thought.Under the influence of Bentham's Utilitarianism in his childhood,John Mill took his own liberalism and utilitarianism as the philosophical foundation of her feminism under the background of the industrial revolution in the 19 th century in England,combined with Mary Wollstonecraft's early liberal feminism,and in view of the actual situation of the lack of women's rights in society,he proposed two changes in the private and public fields The unequal experience of changing women.Mill believes that in the private field,women's oppression in the family should be changed.She calls on women in the family to get rid of the heavy domestic work so as to achieve economic independence and self-consciousness awakening,and finally achieve family happiness.In the public sphere,women's rights should be improved in three aspects: education,employment and political participation.Through education,women can get jobs,provide double intelligence for the society,realize the happiness of the largest majority of people,and obtain and maintain their basic rights through the right to vote at the political level.The purpose is not only to promote the rational development of women themselves,but also to improve the progress of men Provide incentives.However,mill's understanding of the characteristics of women's thinking is too arbitrary.Mill's criticism of the inequality between men and women still meets the requirements of the development of capitalism,and there is no more in-depth attack on the nature of gender oppression.All these are the limitations of mill'sfeminism.However,mill's feminist thought can not be ignored in its value or transcendence.The enlightenment to Chinese women's problems includes promoting equal employment of men and women,eliminating gender discrimination in the field of employment,improving the level of Chinese women's political participation and arousing women's self-awareness.There are two innovations in this paper: first,based on the position of Marxist feminism,this paper analyzes mill's feminism and tries to fully show the demeanor of mill's feminists,which is very rare in the domestic research field;second,although mill's feminism corresponds to the 19 th century British society,which is totally different from China's current national conditions,China has passed the great society The social revolution has completed the change of social nature and is fully capable of achieving equality between men and women in the near future.However,this paper attempts to use mill's ideas on women's rights for reference from the perspective of methodology to solve the problem of inequality between men and women,so as to add impetus to the sound development of China's women's cause.