What is called the nature of women is an artificial thing

Women's nature is artificial; perfect equality of the sexes

John Stuart Mill 1806 · 1873An action is right if it increases happiness, but not all pleasures are equal.

What it claims

The legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself and a hindrance to human progress: it should be replaced by perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on one side nor disability on the other.

Why

Women's nature is unknown, since they have only been seen subordinated; and if nature decides, no law is needed: competition is enough.

In short

"What is called the nature of women is an artificial thing" is an argument by John Stuart Mill (Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869, ch. 1) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: equality). Its claim: The legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself and a hindrance to human progress: it should be replaced by perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on one side nor disability on the other. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 5 objections, 4 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Mill, The Subjection of Women, 1869, ch. 1

Valid with an implicit premise

For centuries, women's place was justified by their "nature": made for the home, less fit to govern or think. Mill replies that nobody knows what that nature is, since we have never seen a society where women were not subordinated to men. What is called their nature is the result of upbringing: some qualities were encouraged as in a hothouse, others stifled. And if women's nature really makes them unfit for a task, no law is needed to forbid it: free competition will be enough. Mill concludes that the legal subordination of one sex to the other is unjust and a hindrance to human progress, and should be replaced by perfect equality.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where the nature of the sexes is unknown and artificial but the law is nevertheless justified: for instance if one thinks that a division of roles, even without proof, serves social order.

The argument is valid with the hidden premise P5. P1 and P2 take away the evidential value of "nature". P3 and P4 show that, even if such a nature existed, the law would be pointless. P5 draws the consequence. Objections target P1-P2 (does nature exist?) and P3 (is competition enough, in a society with its habits?).

Analogy. A plant is raised in a heated greenhouse: some shoots grow very fast, others left in the frost stay stunted. The gardener, who does not remember this treatment, concludes the plant is made that way. Mill says men took for women's nature what they had themselves cultivated.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Aristotle (nature makes the male the ruler) 350 BC · attacks premise 1

For Aristotle, the male is by nature superior and the female inferior; the one rules and the other is ruled. This principle of necessity extends to all mankind.

a defender replies

John Stuart Mill defender of the argument · 1869

Mill replies, without naming Aristotle, that no one knows or can know the nature of the two sexes as long as they have only been seen in their present relation, and that what is called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Mill does not refute Aristotle on biology; he denies that observing a situation of domination reveals a nature. The debate has moved to what biology and social sciences show, with little agreement on the share of the innate.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (woman is made to please) 1762 · attacks premise 3

For Rousseau, it follows that woman is specially made for man's delight. This is not the law of love, but the law of nature, which is older than love itself. The education of women should therefore be relative to men.

a defender replies

John Stuart Mill defender of the argument · 1869

Mill replies, without naming Rousseau, that what is contrary to women's nature they will never do by giving their nature free play: the anxiety of men to interfere on behalf of nature is unnecessary.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: both rely on "nature", but Rousseau wants to organise it through education, Mill wants it revealed through freedom. The debate is about what nature is and who should decide.

The common opinion Mill discusses (woman's natural vocation) 1869 · attacks premise 4

It is commonly supposed that a woman's natural vocation is to be a wife and mother. Society needs women to marry and bear children: they would not if they had other options. So they must be compelled by law.

a defender replies

John Stuart Mill defender of the argument · 1869

Mill replies that, judging from acts, from the whole of the present constitution of society, one might infer that men think the contrary: that this alleged natural vocation is of all things the most repugnant to women's nature, since they must be denied every other option.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Mill turns the argument around: if the vocation were natural, compulsion would be needless. His opponents reply that society needs these roles. The debate has moved to the sharing of domestic work, which Mill treats partly in chapter 2.

James Fitzjames Stephen (men are stronger) 1873 · attacks premise 2

Stephen, an English jurist and critic of Mill, replies that all the talk in the world will not shake this fact: men are stronger than women in every way, in muscular and nervous force, in intellect and in character. This fact, observed everywhere and always, has everywhere produced a division of labour between the sexes: so "nature" is not an invention of upbringing.

a defender replies

John Stuart Mill (written before Stephen) defender of the argument · 1869

Mill had already answered this kind of argument: what women by nature cannot do, it is superfluous to forbid, and what they do less well than their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from. Even if Stephen were right about strength, the law would remain needless.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Stephen speaks of an observed fact, Mill of what observation can prove in a society where women are subordinated. Mill's reply does not settle the question of differences; it makes it irrelevant to the law. The debate on differences is open, much less so on legal equality.

Susan Moller Okin (Mill keeps the traditional division of roles) 1979 · attacks the conclusion

Feminist readers of Mill, Okin among them, note that he does not carry his "perfect equality" through: in chapter 2 he grants that a woman who marries generally chooses, as a man chooses a profession, to put the management of the household and the raising of children first. So the division of roles within the family stays in place, and with it much of the inequality.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1979, after the author's death (1873).

The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Mill (died 1873) speaks of a free choice, once all professions are open to women, and he defends their right to work and to property. His defenders see a forecast of his time rather than a principle; his critics, a limit of the argument: free competition does not reach work done at home.