Men dominated the public sphere. Women's place was in the private sphere, she shared this space with her family moreover, serviced all their needs. This put her in a subjective position. John Stuart Mill (1869) wrote one of the first political tracts to address what was to become "The Woman Question" in Victorian society, Mill outlined in his work the social inequalities built into the marriage contract, including disparate property rights and women's familial responsibilities. Moreover he questioned the very foundations of Victorian society with his attack. (Tong 1997).
Conversely, how important is this history to modern day arguments relating to inequalities? Well Mill argued that women should move into the workplace if they were to challenge men and gain freedom from subordination, he expected too that women would also continue to run the household and care for the children. Clearly he understood the effects of women transgressing into the workplace; moreover one could argue that he would be indeed surprised at just how accurate his philosophy was. Problems lie within Mill's work though, whilst one could argue that his work at the time was indeed radical, he had to be very careful to not alienate himself from both men and women in his society, most women then did believe that they should be in the home, consequently Mill argued that it was indeed in their "nature" to choose the role of wife and mother. (William Stafford, 1998) .
Second wave feminists have argued against such notions of natural choice, they challenge the idea that motherhood is the only meaningful available occupation open to women. They have developed a critique of the family, which largely claims it to be:.
ideological confinement to the domestic sphere and that it institutionalises heterosexuality and defines other forms of sexuality as deviant. (Nickie Charles, 2000 p179).
Thus the idea that women should be heterosexual, married, homemaker and mother has served to construct the community mind.