Perspectives on sexual-social contract: John Locke and Carole Pateman

Abstract

The social contract theory or contractualism is a political theory that explains the origin and purpose of the state and the civil rights tied to it. The basic idea of classical contractualism is that the state is formed through an agreement –real or fictional– among the members of a certain group in the state of nature, where a set of rights and duties are established between the state and the civil society or the citizens. In this article I will present John Locke’s contractualist theory and the feminist critique that the political theorist Carole Pateman raises against the foundations of this theory. Pateman identifies three contradictions in Locke’s theory that show the absence of an explanation of the situation of women in the theory and she proposes to explain this situation through the theory of the sexual contract, a previous contract to the social contract on which the social contract is based. I will then draw the implications of this critique for the theory and for our present time and some possible objections will be discussed.

Key words: social contract, sexual contract, state, civil society, Locke, Pateman.