The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy

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FEMINIST ENGAGEMENTS WITH SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

Janice Richardson

Introduction

The idea of a social contract is employed in both political and ethical philosophy. In early modern political philosophy, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the social contract was part of a conjectural history or political idea, mainly associated with the work of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. They used it in order to justify obedience to the law based only upon the consent of the governed. Each author told a story about the transition from the state of nature to that of civil society, a state with a sovereign and laws, which took place as a result of a social contract. All viewed the political organization of society as something that is constructed by human beings, rejecting the previous assumptions that there is a natural hierarchy between men and that sovereigns rule as an expression of God’s will. However, there is an inconsistency in these progressive stories with regard to women, whom the classic theorists—with the possible exception of Hobbes—continued to view as natural subordinates to men.

Classic social contract theorists actually wrote about women. It was only later that discussions about the sexes became marginalized as irrelevant to political philosophy and earlier feminist arguments ignored. Social contract theory went into abeyance but, when it regained popularity after Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1971, it continued this later trend of depoliticizing the position of women. Feminist theory therefore marks a radical shift by forcing mainstream political theorists to recognize that women’s subordination is a political problem. In her groundbreaking attack on social contract theory, Carole Pateman (Brennan and Pateman 1979; Pateman 1988; 1989) analyses the political assumptions that come to light when the position of women is considered. In the second section below, I will detail Pateman’s arguments, including her view that it is through contract that subordination is created and managed in modernity (on which, see also Chapter 52 in this volume).

Turning from politics to ethics, in her essay “Feminist Contractarianism,” Jean Hampton produces an ethical theory of the social contract. Hampton distinguishes between two types of contract: one derived from Hobbes and the other from Kant. As a Kantian, Hampton characterizes the Hobbesian position as only mimicking morality (Hampton 2007: 13). Hobbes claims that it is prudent to appear to treat people with respect and to maintain contracts (so long as others do the same). This “advice to the fool” who would betray the trust of others (Hobbes 1994: chap. XV, 90) has been taken up by game theorists, in particular David Gauthier (1987) and also a few feminists (Dimock 2008). Hobbesian “morality” is based upon self-interest, in contrast to Kant’s position in which persons are to be respected as having equal intrinsic worth.

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Kant himself was dubious as to whether women could be classed as moral persons (1960: 79–81 [2: 229–231]). Nevertheless, Hampton (2002; 2007) employs the Kantian idea of a contract to ask of a heterosexual relationship (with marriage in mind): “would free and equal persons agree to this relationship?” and she does not accept any false sense of duty, or emotional ties on behalf of the wife, to justify exploitation. Again, this involves a major shift in thinking as she highlights a moral problem that arises when women are taught always to prioritize the interests of others at the expense of their own needs. In the third section I will detail the implications of Hampton’s use of the social contract as a test for fairness in heterosexual relationships.

There are areas in which the distinction between the political and ethical divide in social contract theory blurs. Pateman is critical of the way that social contract theory in the twentieth century, under the influence of Rawls (1999), diminishes political philosophy by situating it as moral philosophy:

Political philosophy has been turned into moral philosophy . . . Moreover, theories of original contracts are not about moral reasoning . . . they are about the creation and justification of specific forms of political order; they are about the creation of the modern state and structures of power, including sexual and racial power.

(Pateman and Mills 2007: 20)

Hampton (2007: 8) points out that philosophy is often influenced by a mental picture, even if philosophers are loathe to admit it. Liberal social contract theorists envisage free and equal persons sitting around a table, and ask what they would agree to. While Hampton employs this question as a test for fairness in heterosexual relationships, Rawls employs it to attempt to justify liberal principles by asking what persons would agree to if they were asked what sort of society they would join, without knowing their position within it—that is, deciding under a “veil of ignorance” (Rawls 1999). The aim of these thought experiments is to prompt fairness. This is not achieved by relying upon the hypothetical contract functioning as an actual agreement. It is to focus the mind on the position of the worst off in a society.

It now seems remarkable that Rawls was initially blind to the position of women. In his thought experiment in the original A Theory of Justice published in 1971, he envisaged male “heads of household” who were to decide the principles of a society, without recognizing that there was (and still is) a conflict of interest within the traditional heterosexual family. It is important to remember the possibility of this type of blindness to an area of subordination years after Susan Moller Okin (1989) pointed out this deficiency in Rawls’ thought experiment. She employs Rawls’ Kantian image of free and equal persons, turning it to feminist ends by prompting the reader to ask: Would free and equal persons agree to be women in our society? How would you like it?

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Feminist philosophy often challenges the usual ways in which philosophy is categorized. The question of what free and equal persons would agree to, as a test of equal worth, has been employed by feminist theorists from very different traditions. Continental philosopher and lawyer Drucilla Cornell (1995: ch. 1) adopts this question in a manner that shares some similarities with Hampton. Both treat the question as an evocative test that is to be repeatedly asked in certain circumstances, in contrast to Rawls’ one-off posing of the question in his thought experiment. For Hampton, the question functions as a way of consciousness-raising, to focus upon whether a heterosexual relationship is one in which the extent of inequality indicates a lack of respect for the equal worth of the parties. In contrast, Cornell proposes that the question is to be employed whenever common law judges or legislators make a legal decision. In other words, these legal decisions are to be underpinned by the principles of equality by employing the question of whether free and equal persons could agree to them. If judges allow their stereotyped images of women to influence their judgement, then this indicates that they are being unreasonable and thereby failing in their public duty.

Cornell (2000) also develops her position to support rights in terms of race. Similarly, Charles Mills (1997) has drawn from Pateman, Okin, and Hampton to argue for the political usefulness of thinking of a racial contract. Like Rawls and Okin, Mills employs the thought experiment of free and equal persons deciding on the principles of a society, under the veil of ignorance. Whereas Okin (1989) points out that the participants should be viewed as not knowing their gender, prompting the question of whether free and equal persons would agree to be female in our society, Mills asks this question with regard to race. Mills’ aim is to speak to Rawlsians in their own terms and to produce a “subversive social contract,” akin to that of Okin on gender, Rousseau on class, and, Mills argues, Pateman. However, Pateman resists this characterization of her work, as I will discuss in detail below. In addition to adopting the idea of a social contract to highlight racism, there have been diverse arguments on the relationship between the social contract and disability (Becker 2005) and lesbians (Wittig 1989).

I will now consider in more detail, first, the classic social contract theorists; second, Pateman’s political analysis; and third, Hampton’s ethics. In the fourth and final section I will draw out the differences in the main feminist positions on social contract theory, both in its political and ethical forms.

The Classic Social Contract Theorists

Hobbes’ Leviathan, published in 1651, was radical in starting with an image of human beings as naturally free and equal in a state of nature and arguing that political arrangements are socially constructed. In this conjectural history, Hobbes describes a transition from the state of nature to a civil society with laws. The reason for this transition is based upon the need to escape the state of nature in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short” (Hobbes 1994: ch. XIII [9], 149). It is a cautionary tale, influenced by the English civil war, that warns of what would happen without a sovereign. Hobbes’ arguments are based upon his images of humanity: as selfish, acquisitive, competing individuals, who are also rational enough to recognize the benefits of a social contract and to create a sovereign, whose role is to enforce law—and hence contractual agreements—by the use of force.

In our natural state, without marriage contracts, there would be no assumption that the man would be the head of a family. As usual, Hobbes is practical. Given that the woman would be the only one who may know the identity of the father of her child and could choose not to tell him: “the right of dominion over the child dependeth upon her will, and is consequently hers” (Hobbes 1994: ch. XX [5], 129). Further, in any dispute between men and women, Hobbes does not assume that men will win:

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And whereas some have attributed the dominion to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex, they misreckon in it. For there is not always that difference of strength or prudence between the man and the woman as that the right can be determined without war.

(Hobbes 1994: ch. XX [4], 128)

Pateman therefore highlights an inconsistency in Hobbes’ otherwise rigorously told story: why should women, who are not subordinate in a state of nature, join a social contract as a result of which—in Hobbes’ time—marriage laws would be enacted that would render them subordinate to men? I will discuss this further below.

In contrast, Locke views as natural a family form in which wives are subordinate to their husbands (1988a: ch. V §27, 174). Locke’s conjectural history is a story of natural property owners who are also able to use money. However, in a state of nature, individuals have the right to enforce justice against anyone who wrongs them and many are biased in their own cause. Male heads of household are therefore motivated to enter into a social contract to have a sovereign to guarantee impartial justice and preserve property rights. Locke’s justification for private property (1988b: ch. V) is the origin of “property in the person,” which is central to Pateman’s critique of contract, to be discussed below. Locke’s move of viewing male dominance in the family as natural is central to Rousseau’s strongly misogynist understanding of women and the sentimental family, as described in his story of the transition from the state of nature to civil society (see for example, Okin 2002).

Kant’s social contract theory differs from those of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau in that Kant does not speculate on life in a state of nature. Instead, Kant describes the social contract as an idea that we have as a result of our ability to reason,

[The social contract] is in fact merely an idea of reason, which nonetheless has undoubted practical reality; for it can oblige every legislator to frame his laws in such a way that they could have been produced by the united will of a whole nation and regard each subject, in so far as he can claim citizenship, as if he had consented to the general will.

(Kant 1991: 79 [8: 35–42])

Kant draws a distinction between the faculties of reason and understanding that differs from previous uses by Plato and Aristotle. As an “idea of reason,” the social contract can be distinguished from a concept of the understanding. The idea of a social contract is therefore similar to ideas of God or freedom. It does not relate to objects of experience (which we can understand), but nevertheless it can be thought and is related to morality. As the above quotation illustrates, Kant employs the idea of the social contract as a test for legitimacy of laws. For example, he argues against enactment of hereditary privilege on the grounds that free and equal persons could not agree to such laws (Kant 1996: 139 [6: 329]).

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The Political Social Contract: Carole Pateman

Pateman’s The Sexual Contract (1988) marks a decisive moment in feminist critique of the social contract. She asks why a progressive political argument against natural hierarchy, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, did not include women. She shows the inter-relationship between different areas of subordination and is practical in her analysis of freedom, providing a theoretical basis in support of greater workplace democracy and a basic income. Pateman adds a fiction of her own to the social contract stories. She points to a “sexual contract” between men that allows them access to women’s sexual and other labour and that perpetuates and manages women’s subordination. In civil society, the sovereign passes laws, including marriage laws that—at the time that the classic social contract theorists were writing—included the doctrine of coverture, under which women were effectively civil slaves to their husbands. Without an assumption that women’s subordination is natural, social contract theorists cannot explain why women in their stories would enter into a social contract that, through marriage laws, would render them subordinate to men. In this way, Pateman also draws a link between the social contract and the marriage contract.

Pateman’s analysis of the meaning of “contract” in modernity brings together the social contract with marriage contracts and employment contracts in an unusual way. It allows her to take the imaginative step of examining the position of the weaker party in a “contract” as envisaged in both political theory and in legal practice. She thereby invites us to compare the relationships between sovereign and subject alongside those of employer and employee and traditional husband and wife. In each case the contract creates a weaker party, who supposedly freely consents to obey the other party. The fact that they do not expect to have their voices heard undermines the possibility of participative democracy.

Pateman examines and problematizes the idea of the consent of the weaker parties in these contracts. All are viewed as exchanging “property in the person,” which acts as a political and legal fiction to “justify” subordination. The type of “property in the person” envisaged cannot be separated from the human body and so involves a relationship based upon obedience. In the classic social contract theories individuals are envisaged as giving up their right of self-government to different degrees, depending upon the theorist. Similarly, as Marx points out, in the employment contract employees’ exchange of their labour power for a wage means that they expect to be told what to do within the workplace (1976: 280). In the traditional marriage contract—which Pateman situates as having its “heyday” between 1840 and 1970 (1996: 204)—the wife was expected to provide consortium (sex and housework). Unlike employees, she was not treated as owning her own labour power, and her labour in the home was unlimited in time and was exchanged for financial support rather than a wage. Divorce remained blocked by law well after workers gained the right to leave their employer, leaving aside the financial and other “exit costs” that both suffer. By attacking the myth of the consent of the governed, in the widest sense of the phrase, Pateman also undermines the image of liberal individuals whose reasons for acting are viewed as deriving from their own free will rather than being socially situated.

Hence Pateman draws from, but importantly extends, Macpherson’s (1962) criticism of social contract theories. Pateman argues that whereas in feudalism there were clear hierarchies based upon the idea of natural status, in modernity hierarchical relations are created (and governed) by contracts that involve the exchange of property in the person. Pateman provides the other neglected side of Macpherson’s analysis, which focuses only upon citizens and employees. Even in the twentieth century, the welfare state assumed the model of a husband/breadwinner and wife, and the courts employed the fiction of “implied contractual terms” in marriage to women’s detriment. (“Implied terms” are contractual terms that a court will assume to be part of contracts even though they are not stated. They are employed to allow courts to regulate contracts.) One implied term was that women’s consent to marriage was also consent to have sex with her husband at any time. The effect was to place husbands beyond the reach of the criminal rape law in the UK and Australia until 1991. The use of this legal fiction also regulates employment contracts. For example, there is an implied term that workers are expected to obey reasonable orders.

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Today contract law courses still only focus upon one-off transactions rather than contracts that create and broadly regulate relationships. It still appears to be odd to link the social contract—a story of individuals’ agreement to create a sovereign to rule them—with employment contracts and marriage contracts. Yet all of these contracts are used to explain and, through law, to regulate obedience, and all envisage relationships that endure through the fictional exchange of property in the person.

Pateman traces the history of early modern political theory to highlight differences between social contract theories in ways that are still relevant today. She argues that:

Hobbes was too revealing about civil society. The political character of the conjugal right was expertly concealed in Locke’s separation of what he called “paternal” power from political power and, ever since, most political theorists, whatever their views about other forms of subordination, have accepted that powers of husbands derive from nature and hence are not political.

(Pateman 1989: 462)

For Pateman, Locke closes down an argument in support of women’s natural equality that arose when Hobbes’ political analysis started with individuals rather than the traditional heterosexual family. Ironically, Locke holds a politically progressive position but ultimately excludes women. In the first part of the Two Treatises of Government Locke (1988a) argues against Filmer’s support for the divine right of kings to rule based upon paternal power. Pateman points out that Locke’s discussion of paternal power—the power of fathers over their children—occludes his additional assumption that husbands naturally exercise power over their wives: “When paternal power is seen as paradigmatic of natural subjection, critical questions about the designation of sexual and conjugal rights as natural are all too easily disregarded” (Pateman 1988: 92).

Locke draws an insidious distinction between male power within the traditional family and political power. It is this division of power into two types—one to be exercised within the household and the other in the state—that explains Locke’s inconsistency regarding women. It allows him to reject the naturalness of male hierarchy while dismissing women’s subordination within the household as falling outside of politics. This idea of women’s natural subordination to men within marriage was subsequently continued in the form of the claim that women’s “place in the home” was natural and not properly discussed as part of political philosophy.

Pateman’s use of the “sexual contract” in her analysis has been criticized on the grounds that it “rests on an unspecified and unwarranted essentialist conception of historical development that makes it impossible to alter institutions and practices without first rooting out their historical foundations” (Schochet 2007: 241). In response to this line of argument, Pateman points out that she did not aim to produce an origin story herself (Pateman and Mills 2007). The fictional “sexual contract” is employed to illustrate a point, as part of an analysis of the origin stories of the classic social contractarians. The classic social contract tales work “as if” there were also a sexual contract.

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In addition to questioning Pateman’s dismissal of contract for feminist ends, Okin (1990: 666) argues that Pateman moves ambiguously between a critique of liberal social contract theory and of libertarianism in her analysis of contract. However, as Okin recognizes, one of Pateman’s central concerns is the fiction that we can exchange or commodify human abilities. This fiction is relied upon in both liberal and neo-liberal societies, being the basis of the institution of employment as well as traditional marriage.

The Ethical Social Contract: Jean Hampton

Whereas Pateman is critical of the social contract, Hampton applies the Kantian/Rawlsian idea of asking what individuals would agree to, if given the choice. In her paper, “Feminist Contractarianism,” she describes the test of fairness in relationships in the following terms:

Given the fact that we are in this relationship, could both of us reasonably accept the distribution of costs and benefits (that is, the costs and benefits that are not themselves side effects of any affective or duty-based tie between us) if it were the subject of an informed, unforced agreement in which we think of ourselves as motivated solely by self-interest?

(Hampton 2007: 21)

Hampton bases her test question on Kant’s claim that we all have equal moral worth. Her work reminds women that this involves treating themselves as equal. When they perceive themselves as owing a “false duty” to look after others to such an extent that they are exploited, then they fail in their duty to treat themselves as being of equal moral worth. What I am calling a “false duty” can therefore function just like “emotional ties,” by prompting women to maintain exploitative heterosexual relationships in which they are treated as having lower moral worth than their male partner. If these areas of leverage are not excluded then the husband is effectively saying: you put more into this relationship because it is your role as a woman or because you love me more.

Similarly, in the Hobbesian version of contractarian morality, the adoption of “non-tuism” has been argued to be necessary for women to avoid exploitation (Dimock 2008). Non-tuism is the assumption that individuals must be treated as disinterested in the other parties’ preferences when asking what individuals would agree to in a hypothetical contract. This is not because human beings are actually disinterested in each other—as their preferences themselves may prioritize others’ welfare—but because as Gauthier puts it,

[T]he contractarian sees sociability as enriching human life; for him, it becomes a source of exploitation if it induces persons to acquiesce in institutions and practices that but for their fellow-feelings would be costly to them. Feminist thought has surely made this, perhaps the core form of human exploitation, clear to us.

(Gauthier 1987: 11)

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While claiming that the basis for her test is that of equal moral worth (and hence moral realism) rather than that of exploitation per se, Hampton has also explained that she finds evocative Hobbes’ claim that “we are not under any obligation to make ourselves prey to others” (Hampton and Pyle 1999: 236; Hobbes 1994: ch. XIV [5] 80). However, it should be stressed that her test serves simply to demonstrate when a relationship is so one-sided as to indicate a lack of respect for equal worth (that one is making oneself the prey of another) and is not the same as the Hobbesian contract position of considering what would be the best possible deal available. This is what separates Hampton’s Kantian use of contract (“contractualism”) from the Hobbesian one (“contractarianism”). The implication of Hampton’s Kantianism is that if there were no marriages that would allow her to respect herself as of equal worth then she should not marry, because of her duty to herself. In contrast, for Hobbesians, you make the best deal possible, given that one’s worth is nothing more than one’s price (Hobbes 1994: ch. X [16] 51).

Like Pateman, Hampton focuses upon subordination. For Hampton, exploitation (as indicated in the hypothetical contract by the fact that the woman would not agree to the basis of the marital relationship if not for leverage as a result of falsely perceived duty and affection) indicates that she is being treated as having unequal moral worth and hence as a subordinate. In contrast, Pateman traces the history of different types of subordination, which facilitate exploitation. With regard to this aspect of their work, Hampton, as a liberal, is reframing Rawls but Pateman, in part, extends and refocuses Marx.

Hampton also employs her Kantian contractualist analysis to understand the criminal law and to address the question of when forgiveness is acceptable. This is based upon the view of crime as occurring when the criminal holds himself (or herself) above the victim in terms of moral worth. (In terms of Hampton’s test for unfairness in relationships it would be at the extreme end of failure.) Criminal law judges are therefore under a duty to make a public statement, by the punishment, that the criminal was wrong to hold himself (or herself) above the victim. This is not achieved if, for example, the penalty for rape, or for hate crimes generally, is derisory. From within her critique of classic social contract theory, Pateman (1979) approaches the same problem—that of gaining justice for female victims under criminal law—when she points out that some citizens do not receive the same advantages as others from living in a state and yet receive more burdens.

Feminists whose work promotes an ethic of care are major critics of any use of social contract theory, specifically criticising Hampton. Virginia Held (1987), for example, argues that the paradigmatic image of these contracting individuals is that of economic man, characterized as selfish and individualistic. Hampton’s response is that she derives an objective morality from her Kantian position from which to claim justice for women, and that whether the images of the parties to the contract appear to be male because of our empirical practices is irrelevant to this normative position. In response, Held argues that it is individualism, implicit within the use of a hypothetical contract, as a moral ideal that is the subject of her critique. There have also been criticisms of Kantian personhood in the feminist continental philosophical tradition. For example, Irigaray argues that, by “adding in” women to the conception of the Kantian person, the possibility of sexual difference is closed down, to women’s detriment (Irigaray 1985; see also Battersby 1998).

Held’s concern that the individual envisaged within the hypothetical contract is unencumbered, and stereotypically male, is consistent with Pateman’s historically situated analysis of the emergence and interaction of different forms of subordination in relation to women and class (and race in her later analysis of the white settler contract in Pateman and Mills 2007). Held cites Pateman approvingly when Pateman complains that, “One of the most striking features of the last two decades is the extent to which the assumptions of liberal individualism have permeated the whole of social life” (Pateman 1985: 182–183; cited in Held 1987: 111). This raises questions about the extent to which different feminist responses to social contract theory are compatible and about the areas of debate between these theorists.

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Are Feminist Perspectives on the Social Contract Compatible?

In his conversation with Pateman, Mills argues that Pateman’s work is compatible with that of Hampton; that Pateman’s analysis does not undermine the Kantian idea of equal worth (Pateman and Mills 2007). This repeats a point made by Okin (1989). It leads Mills to argue that Pateman’s “sexual contract” could be viewed as a non-ideal, subversive contract, within the social contract tradition itself. Pateman resists this positioning of her work. I will now consider this debate before comparing Cornell’s framework with that of Hampton and then Pateman (see Richardson 2009).

Pateman claims that Hampton “lets the cat out of the bag” because Hampton does not require a reference to a hypothetical contract to make her arguments based on equal moral worth (Pateman and Mills 2007: 22). Mills agrees and—on this basis—argues that Pateman’s criticism of social contract theory has no bite against Hampton’s use of it. However, Pateman’s central concern is that subordination is perpetuated and participatory democracy is undermined by a particular type of contract involving the fictional exchange of property in the person. Therefore it is unsurprising that she resists the unnecessary legitimation of the idea of contract as symbolic of fairness in a thought experiment. While Mills finds the idea of the “subversive contract” a useful way to respond to Rawlsian liberals in their own language, Pateman simply rejects their approach to political philosophy.

Similarly, Pateman argues that Okin’s re-reading of Rawls—to ask if free and equal persons, beneath the veil of ignorance, would agree to be women in our patriarchal society—is also unnecessary. Okin’s arguments regarding injustice in the traditional family do not depend upon it (Pateman and Mills 2007: 22). Pateman goes on to explain why such a contractual procedure is not only unnecessary but distracts from truly political questions: “The pertinent question for me is what policies may be feasible and have a reasonable chance of moving things in a more democratic direction. And that also requires an analysis of what is wrong at present” (Pateman and Mills 2007: 22).

What of the continental theorist Drucilla Cornell? I will compare her work with that of Hampton then Pateman. Cornell draws from Kant’s idea of the agreement of free and equal persons to make a claim against judges and the legislature. However, she distinguishes her position from that of Hampton (Cornell 1995: 242, fn16). Cornell refuses to be classified as a “contractarian” to the extent that this means employing the contract as a “moral or justice proof procedure” (1995: 242, fn16). However, as discussed above, Hampton’s position only depends upon equal moral worth, not the hypothetical contract per se. Where Cornell and Hampton really differ, aside from their uses of the hypothetical contract, is in terms of Cornell’s position on selfhood and our use of imagination. She argues that in order to have a democracy, it is necessary to have people who are able to become citizens, and she holds an anti-humanist position in which the process of individuation—of becoming an individual separate from others—is itself a problem.

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Hampton supports her own analysis by showing how boys are brought up to have a greater sense of entitlement than girls. For Cornell, adopting a Lacanian psychoanalytic view, self-development does not end with childhood. Instead we continually struggle to become “persons,” capable of citizenship. As a result, Cornell argues that free and equal persons would not agree to laws that would undermine their “project of becoming a person” in the first place. This “project” is threatened by sexual harassment, for example, because it can interfere with someone’s imago, or ideal self-image. As a lawyer, Cornell extends that move to argue for specific laws and an underpinning of legal decisions by repeating the question of what free and equal persons would agree to, whereas Hampton’s test is to detect injustice in relationships.

Turning to the contrast between Cornell and Pateman, Pateman also asks what it takes to produce citizens (1970: 24–25). In contrast to Cornell’s use of Lacan, Pateman draws from Rousseau (1968). She argues that participative democracy can only occur if prospective citizens expect to have their voices heard in their everyday lives, rather than imagining that they exchange or sell parts of themselves in the traditional home and the workplace. The necessary skills and confidence to participate in citizenship are learned when we have the opportunity to negotiate and say what we agree to in practice, as in workplace democracy. Pateman, as a political philosopher, details the history of subordination through contract to support her contemporary arguments for a basic income and in favour of a participative democracy. While Cornell may be sympathetic with these claims, she argues for the basis of law to be formulated in terms of equal respect for moral worth.

Feminist philosophers’ engagements with social contract theory are rich and diverse. A major divide lies between critics of social contract theory and those who try to use it for feminist ends; those who view the tradition as political, and those who view it as producing techniques for thinking about ethics and for game theory. The extent to which these positions are compatible depends upon theorists’ wider political analyses and their conceptions of what it is to be human.