The Influence Of Harriet Taylor Mill On Feminism

Feminism is a movement with dating back all the way to 1837. It’s been shaped by many great thinkers and their works. Perhaps no lady has posed more of an influence on the movement then Bell Hooks, who changed much of the world’s views on feminism, in her book Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression. Harriet Taylor Mill also would have a large impact in what would later become Liberal Feminism. The ideology has developed thoroughly through the years with the help of more contemporary feminist philosophers such as, Gloria Feldt who wrote the influential feminist novel, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power, and many other influential feminist text. These powerful women would go a great length to alter people’s views

Taylor Mill argued that there should be no laws over marriage and that women should retain all rights to their children in case of divorce. She wrote the highly influential essay titled Enfranchisement of Women she argues that Women and Men should generally be considered as equal, this seems like a generally obvious statement compared to the ones from bell hooks, but this was the early 1800’s a time when feminism was just developing as an ideology .Her ideas were significantly more radical than those of most feminist at the time and even more radical than those of her husband. This perhaps due to her background of a relatively middle to high class women. Bell hooks would argue that she could develop these radical ideas because she could hide behind the success of her

All these women came from different social, economic and socio-political background. Harriet Taylor Mill was given the opportunity to lay the foundation for feminism, while hiding under her husband’s wing, she was a relatively middle to high class individual who focused on issues that women like her faced. She believed that equality was simply based on equal opportunity for both sexes simply based on skill not gender, as both could do things equally well. Gloria Feltd argued and fought for women’s reproductive rights, as she was a teenage mother herself. She just as Taylor Mill had a middle to high class background, she believed among other things that equality would come with reproductive rights for all. Hooks, who would face the most adversity in her life compared to Taylor Mill and Feltd, growing up in the working class as an African American. This adversity would turn out to be hope, as she saw the many issues faced by women, African Americans and by Feminists themselves. Hooks who had a poorer more turbulent background would petition many more issues having a much different view of equality, then the upper middle class Taylor Mills and Feltd. It’s clear that these people’s backgrounds shaped what they would fight for, how they would do it and in the end their own views of