He considered that education of women was very important for empowering of the society in general and argued that women should be granted more political and legal rights.
Under whatever conditions, and within whatever limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same .The majority of the women of any class are not likely to differ in political opinion from the majority of the men of the same class (Mill, 1869:96).
Mill often used his position as a Member of Parliament to demand the vote for women. He published The Enfranchisement of Women in 1851 in which he again strongly advocated for women’s political rights and equal education with …show more content…
The Enlightenment thinkers in 18th century had liberal ideas for equality of all people and found a connection between women’s subordination and position of slaves. Women in England and in America were made slaves in families and in the states. England had oversees colonies in different countries as well as in few states in northern part of USA. The philosophers of Enlightenment believed in the “Rights of man” and opposed slavery and slave trade. An English poet William Cowper wrote: “We have no slaves at home – Then why abroad? (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-cowper). The influence of British Enlightenment thinkers who for the first time started to criticize the practice of slavery spread in America and firstly was accepted by Quakers and other tolerant and liberal religious groups. Slaveholders showed interest only for profit, they were unable to see the subordination and oppression. Black women were in more desperate position then black men. They fought with they own status as a “subject” and the status of their children and husbands. As Donna Haraway pointed out in her essay Ecce Homo celoto ime (1989) “slave mothers could not transmit a name; they could not be wives; they were outside the system of marriage exchange. Slaves were unpositioned, unfixed, in a system of names; they were, specifically, unllocated and so disposable”. They were not considered human at …show more content…
In 1827 she fled in New York and worked as a maid. She joined the group of evangelicals in New York and became a member of the African Zionist church. In 1843, she took the name Sojourner Truth, and became a traveling preacher. Later she met the abolitionist and under their influence she included in the women's rights movement. Sojourner was so gifted with public speaking skills that she could silence every man who opposed women. The interconnection between anti-slavery, women’s rights and race are visible in her activism. She is famous by her speech in Akron, Ohio in 1851 at the Women’s Rights Convention when she answered to white male anti suffragist provocateurs emphasizing the injustice of African-American women, condemning the idea of “feminine fragility”, because her “womanhood” and her “female nature” never stopped her to “work as much as men, to act and to speak as a man” (Tong, 2009:22). She referred to motherhood pointing out that her children were taken away from her and sold. These were facts from her own life, but these could apply to every woman. She stood for unification of all women. Her story Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave was published by William Garrison and sold in northern states. In 1858, at a meeting in Silver Lake, Indiana, a man from the audience accused her of being a man due to her height and she opened her blouse to