ABSTRACT
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. 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. Pateman's The Sexual Contract marks a decisive moment in feminist critique of the social contract. She asks why a progressive political argument against natural hierarchy, in those centuries, did not include women. 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. Hampton supports her own analysis by showing how boys are brought up to have a greater sense of entitlement than girls.
