 John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of Women (1869) gives one of the clearest early feminist critiques of the political and distributive structures of the emerging liberal democracies. His writings provided the starting point for many contemporary liberal feminists. Mill argued that the principles associated with the developing liberalism of his time required equal political status for women. The principles Mill explicitly mentions include a rejection of the aristocracy of birth, equal opportunity in education and in the marketplace, equal rights to hold property, a rejection of the man as the legal head of the household, and equal rights to political participation. Feminists inspired by Mill believe that a proper recognition of the position of women in society requires that women be given equal and the same rights as men have, and that these primarily protect their liberty and their status as equal persons under the law. Thus, government regulation should not prevent women from competing on equal terms with men in educational, professional, marketplace and political institutions. The problem for women, on the liberal feminist view, is not liberalism but the failure of society and the State to properly instantiate liberal principles.