The philosophical foundations of gender equality in liberalism and Marxism: a study of Mill and Marx

Abstract

This paper traces the roots of liberal and Marxist feminism back to the thought of two of their 19th century exponents, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, respectively. It argues that, far from taking diametrically opposed positions on the topic of gender or sexual equality, the two authors both shared a concern about the injustices facing women in 19th-century Europe, and analysed those injustices in a similar fashion, although they differed on the best way in which to tackle them. While Mill focused primarily, although by no means exclusively, on legislative change as a means of combating specific injustices, something that later liberals have also tended to do, Marx, like later socialists, and especially those in the Marxist tradition, believed that only an overall change in societal conditions could tackle the problems of gender inequality. The paper argues that it is only by studying these two philosophers that we can understand the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary thought on the issues of gender and the family. Although there have been substantive changes in the relations between women and men since the two men wrote, and issues of gender have come to the forefront in a way in which they were not 150 years ago, the thought of both Mill and Marx resonates in contemporary debates concerning such issues as companionate marriage, family law, and equality in the workplace.