å Monday, February 13th, 2017

Maria Libreros

Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Bullock

Women’s Rights as Human Rights

IAS 31154

Ass. # 2 The Sexual Contract, Carole Pateman

In her book The Sexual- Contract, Carole Pateman made emphasis in  the different ways society respond to sexual differences, and how inequality is based on sexual differences. Pateman also explains how The Social Contract is also a sexual-social pact (p.3). To comprehend this she had to analyze The Social Contract of Philosopher like Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes that were well used to create the Civil Rights, even though those theories focused on the power of men over women.

Pateman’s point of view is that even when there are civil rights and freedom for every human been, the way the social contract were presented the women had been let aside because of sexual difference showing what is to be a man and what is to be a woman (p.16). The social contract says that all men are born free and equal, and it also says all men are individuals. The way women are incorporated into society is through married-contract by subjection to man power and becoming his sexual property without questions or any authority. In this way Carole observed that everything were circulating around a patriarchal society where men is the most important individual in society that she was disappointed with.

Pateman sustained that in the contract the only free individuals are allowed to be part of it, but women are mentioned anywhere, therefore women are not individuals. In this sense women must subjugated by nature by men but were not considered slaves. However, Hobbes was the only theorist that differ from all others. He wrote that there was no different between men and women in the state of nature, and attributes and capacities are equal independently of sex; sexual relations should be by consent through contract or by force, but in this case women would have the right to kill the men (p.44). Here, again observed that men were in power. If, for any circumstances a wife leave the husband it was mean that men did not have the power absolute over his wife.

Even though, women had to struggle to have equal rights and society turn a little in women favor there are still a long way to go regarding sex differences or sex power. As an example, this differences are still observed in some cultures where women still been subjugated by men, by society, in politics, religions. I believe that the day this can change is when all men and women will have the same rights independently of sex.

Women’s role in society at large has always been explained away as somehow “natural” – a term, we should keep in mind, whose meaning is largely derived from the ideology of whoever happens to be employing it. Of course, if something is “natural” then how can anyone question it? In the case of women, “natural” also seems to implies something that should be taken for granted and not terribly important. They are unquestionable truths with which we should barely even bother to reckon. But, Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract begins to reckon with these seemingly common sense ideas and challenges the notions about women that society holds so dear.
To break down some of the ways that we can begin to understand this, Pateman offers up the yin and yang of private vs. public or, as they tend to be described by theorists, natural vs. civil. Pateman reminds us that the terms are actually defined in opposition to each other. That is, what defines the private is precisely that it is not public and vice versa. If we agree with that supposition (and, it does seem nearly impossible to argue against) then, this has implications for the way private – generally, defined by what happens within the bounds of domesticity – and the public – generally, defined by what happens in the world outside of the home – both depend on and interact with one another.
What we find is that all sorts of antiquated ideas about how women should contribute to society are deeply ingrained, even today. And, according to Pateman, the questions of the relationship of the private to the public are not sufficiently grappled with even by political theorists who should have something to say about it. But, because this private (i.e. within the home) is generally thought of as the domain of women it is consistently undervalued. This, despite the fact that, in general terms, the raising of children – all of the responsibility that the word “raise” entails – the general maintenance of the household – all of the responsibility that the word “maintenance” entails – is thought of, at best, as playing a supporting role.
Yet, if we go back to the notion that the public and private cannot exist without the other, we are then forced to say that women – accepting that this is an antiquated version of the role of women – make possible the existence of the public. Whatever happens, then, in civil society is only possible because of the private. In this sense, while the private is separate, it bleeds into and creates the conditions for the public.

The incorporation of women into a sphere that “is and is not civil society” is achieved  through a marriage contract. When a women enters into a marriage contract she is giving her husband rights over her body. Marriage gives the men  sexual access to the woman’s body. According to the social contract, women were never included in the original pact.  They were completed written out of the contract that fortified liberties and rights for men. The contract in essence is an agreement made by men for men.

In the state of nature men and women have equal control over their children. In the state of nature women also have the same instinct to survive ( self-preservation) and even though women were not left out of the state of nature Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau believed that men and women are different and that “women are born into subjugation” (Pateman, 1988 p.41)  and that males have a natural right over women.

According to Hobbes mothers had rights over their children in the state of nature and not fathers. That in the state of nature women did have to consent to sexual intercourse, because it was in the state of nature that she was equal is status, “as free and  equal individuals” (Pateman, 1988 p. 48) to men but once she has children her position changes  because now she must protect herself and her child which places her at a weakness.

The social contract deliberately leaves women out of sharing in liberties, and political rights because the contract in itself is about male sex rights to women’s bodies. The contract is about  sexual access to the female body. Women are not” individuals” an individual is a man. Women’s bodies are thought to be only  reproductive sites. Women are not human beings they are something different ,not male . The pact was voluntarily agreed and consented to by men for men.

Although in the state of nature women have power over their offspring and the instinct to survive, women are believed  not to  possess natural freedoms, they are not born free and therefore do not possess the attributes or capabilities to be an individual capable of entering into  a contract or to be owners of their own bodies.  When a woman enters into a marriage she has to consent to the marriage. If  I understand correctly, consent requires a certain level of freedom, she would have to be recognized as an individual.

When a woman enters into a marriage contract she is simultaneously free but also subordinate. In the marriage contract the male guarantees  his access to conjugal relations.  She is part of civil (public)  society because she entered into a marriage contract but she is also not part of civil  society because once she enters into the marriage contract her husband has rights over her.