Pateman The Sexual Contract
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.
