Term Paper on "Breaking Social Conventions to Achieve Gender Equality"

Term Paper 4 pages (1233 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Breaking social conventions to achieve gender equality: Analysis of John Stuart Mill's "The Subjection of Women"

John Stuart Mill was known for his contemplative discourse on liberty and utilitarianism, two important concepts that developed Western society as it moved forward into modernization in 19th century. As one of the main proponents of utilitarianism, Mill believed that the path towards a socially and morally progressive human society was through actions, behavior, and thought that aims to benefit the majority -- that is, achievement of the "greater good."

Utilitarianism being Mill's primary thesis in his discourses, his essay entitled "The Subjection of Women" brought into fore his discussion of liberty and equality as applied to a particular sector in the society: the women sector. In this essay, Mill confronted the current social order wherein women were subjugated while men dominate and control society and its institutions. He enumerated the nature and conditions in which women subjugation emerged and prevailed throughout human history; from his analysis, he generalized that the history of oppression against women was brought about by the persistence of the ideology that women are the weaker sex, thereby reinforcing the practice of assigning women functions and roles that are secondary or subversive to men.

This paper provides an analysis of Mill's discussion of the origins, development, and propositions against the prevalence of subjugation of women in the society. The analysis conducted posits that Mill proposed that women oppression prevailed because of the preservation of the status quo, wherein women were considered the weaker sex, thus influencing people's beliefs about the capabilities and functions of women in the society. Mill proposed that gender equality will only be achieved if these rigid norms will be broken and society would develop an open-minded perspective that women are as able to function in the society as men are. In effect, he called for the abolishment of limitations that women were usually put or categorized under.

In developing his thesis, Mill had laid down first the state of women subjugation as he observed it in his society (19th century English society): "The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. But how entirely, even in this case, the feeling is dependent on custom, appears by ample experience..." He then went on to prove that contrary to the popular belief that the status quo, wherein women were subjugated by men, was also tolerated by women, Mill argued that there had been numerous literature that express women's protest against the prejudice and discrimination that they received in society. However, society had been reluctant to give attention to these protests, mainly because women subjugation had become part of society's norms that to deviate from this was unthinkable, and would only cause instability on the social order.

Indeed, Mill addressed this tendency of society to hold on to social stability and stagnation. He argued that this tendency developed because status quo was considered modern society's "comfort zone," wherein people were not confronted with the possibility that change can and will happen to them. Mill expressed this observation by stating describing how women's roles and functions originated from and developed to be the norm of English society in 19th century:

All men...desire to have...not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite [sic].. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding… READ MORE

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