This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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Are men different from women by nature? If so what follows? Does it follow that women and men should be pushed or encouraged into different spheres, different types of jobs for example, different roles at home. In his groundbreaking

book The Subjection of Women, the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill can lay claim to

being one of the most important male feminists to date. There he challenged

many of the unquestioned assumptions of his age. Janet Radcliffe

Richards, author of human nature after Darwin, explores male's ideas about what is natural.

Janet Radcliffe Richards, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you. The topic we're

going to talk about today is Human nature, whether men and women have different

natures, and if so, so what? And I guess one place to start would be John Stewart Mill, who

addressed this question.

Yes, he was trying to achieve the legal equality of women in the second half of the

19th century and all his opponents were saying men and women are completely different

by nature and that's why we should have different laws governing the treatment of

them and Mill was trying to argue that we should have the same laws governing the treatment

of them. He was particularly concerned with two issues. There were a lot of rules keeping

women out of men's territory, education, the professions,

the vote and so on.

And there were also a great many laws keeping women in subjection to their husbands and he wanted what he

said was a principle of perfect equality. And the argument of his opponents was that

this was women's nature to be in the kitchen to be

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