Assignment 2
I found the reading of Carole Pateman’s Sexual Contract very interesting. Although it was a lot to read, research and understand I did find it to be very informative. In the Sexual Contract Carole Pateman mentions the word “Patriarchal/ Patriarch” fairly often. A Patriarch is a male controlled government and/or society. A government that is controlled by male dominance is one that will forever under mind women.
In the past women were viewed as property. When marrying a woman in the past, a man would expect to receive land, money etc. Women were the subject in marital contracts dominated by men. These women were not labeled slaves but with no rights, not being seen as equal to their male counter parts, and not having a role in the governing society in which they lived basically made them slaves. If a civil society is one that connects its people by similar interest and “collective activity, how can a woman in the past or even now feel like they matter in a civil society that does not view them equal to men?
Carole Pateman brings up numerous theorists from the past. She speaks on these three theorists, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the social contract. A social contract is made by a community and/or society that wants to create or define rules, benefits, rights and duties for its members. Once again social contracts were created by men. The making of the social contract did not include women although they were part of the society. In my opinion “social contracts” were hypocritical because they were supposed to be created by members in the society but women (members of society) were not making or were not part of making social contracts.
The state of nature- “is a concept used in moral and political philosophy, religion, social contract theories and international law to denote the hypothetical conditions of what the lives of people might have been like before societies came into existence.” In the Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman mentions that “wives” were not mentioned. Since Marriage combined man and woman to husband and wife, “they appeared only in civil society”. Thomas Hobbs believed that in a civil society and civil contract that men had no need to over power women however, women we still and are still over powered by men. With all of this information in these readings I still wonder what needed to be done or what needs to be done in order for women to truly be treated, respected and viewed as equal to men?
