The Sexual Contract
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.
