John Stuart Mill can be considered among…

John Stuart Mill can be considered among the earliest feminists.

In his article, "The Subjection of Women" (1861, published 1869), Mill attempts to prove that the legal subjugation of women is wrong and that it should give way to perfect equality.

He speaks of the role of women in marriage and how he feels it needs to be changed.

Here, Mill comments on three major facets of women's lives that he feels are hindering them: society and gender construction, education, and marriage.

Mill is also famous for being one of the earliest and strongest supporters of ever greater rights for women.

His book The Subjection of Women is one of the earliest written on this subject by a male author.

He fees that the oppression of women is one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impede the progress of humanity.

Mill had refused to study at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge, because he had refused to take Anglican orders.

Instead, he had followed his father to work for the East India Company until 1858, and had attended University College, London (UCL) to hear the lectures of John Austin, the first Professor of Jurisprudence.

He had been elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856.

In 1851, Mill had married Harriet Taylor after twenty-one years of an intimate friendship.

Taylor had been married when they met, and their relationship had been close but is generally believed to be chaste during the years before her first husband died.

Brilliant in her own right, Taylor had been a significant influence on Mill's work and ideas during both friendship and marriage.

His relationship with Harriet Taylor had reinforced Mill's advocacy of women's rights.

He cites her influence in his final revision of On Liberty, which had been published shortly after her death.

She had died in 1858 after developing severe lung congestion, after only seven years of marriage to Mill.

Between the years 1865–1868, Mill has served as Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrews.

During the same period, he has been a Member of Parliament for City and Westminster, and is often associated with the Liberal Party.

During his time as an MP, Mill has advocated easing the burdens on Ireland.

In 1866, Mill had became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debate.

Mill has become a strong advocate of such social reforms as labor unions and farm cooperatives.

In Considerations on Representative Government, Mill calls for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the extension of suffrage.

Seeing women's issues as important, Mill had begun to write in favor of greater rights for women.