ABSTRACT

Originally based in Oxford, Carole Pateman is now Professor of Political Science at UCLA. Amongst her works is The Problem of Political Obligation: a Critique of ‘Liberal Theory’ (1985) which outlines an attack similar to Rousseau’s on the liberate account of the social contract. In The Sexual Contract (1988), from which this extract is taken, she examines the shifting ways in which social contract theorists either exclude women or assume their subordination in a preceding ‘sexual contract’.