The Enfranchisement of Women

Introduction

The essay appeared anonymously in the Westminster Review in July 1851, the year Harriet Taylor married John Stuart Mill; its occasion was the women’s rights convention held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. It calls for full political and civil equality: the vote, access to all public offices and professions, and an end to an upbringing that trains women for dependence. It rejects the argument that women are by nature suited only to the home, since no one can know their nature while they are denied freedom. Mill later reprinted it under her name; how far the two shared in writing each other’s work is debated.