ABSTRACT
As Hirschmann observes, “feminists keep getting drawn back into liberalism in some form. Most feminists at least implicitly agree that the ideals of freedom and equality, so central to historical liberalism, are also historically important to women” (1999: 31). Chapter 1 noted that an interesting aspect of many of the feminist critics’ relationship to liberalism was that they did not repudiate it entirely. ey hold out the possibility of a reconfi gured
liberalism that would be more refl ective of women’s experiences and responsive to their needs. is chapter considers whether the feminist liberals discussed here off er the sort of rapprochement between liberalism and feminist concerns entertained by some of liberalism’s feminist critics. Pateman, however, is one feminist critic who refuses to be drawn into the liberal fold, and so a consideration of her reasons for this is given. e chapter closes with a discussion of the role of ideal theory in social and political criticism which engages Schwartzman’s critique of liberalism and Charles W. Mills’s views on the radical potential of the social contract tradition.3
