ABSTRACT
Carole Pateman is a British political theorist who entered academe as a mature-age student through Ruskin Hall, Oxford University. Pateman’s work is that of a democratic theorist oriented within Anglo-American literature and theorising. One of the central themes of Pateman’s work concerns how modern contractualism does express or guarantee the freedom of the contracting parties, but entails their exchange of obedience for protection. Pateman’s emphasis on the political nature of the employer’s regime is an important and original one. It represents a revision of the Marxian critique of the capitalist employment contract by directing us away from an exclusively economic explanation of the employer-worker relationship. The relationship of surrogate motherhood, once examined, evinces the same assertion of masculine sex right over women who become surrogate mothers. The social contract is a fraternal contract whereby men agree to constitute each other as equal proprietors of sex right.
