From Natural Equality to Sexual Subordination in the Theories of Hobbes and Rawls

The social contract theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Rawls assume the natural equality of women and their equal normative status with men, yet the political and social arrangements their respective theories justify nevertheless may allow for women’s subordination. The chapter investigates how that surprising outcome is produced in each of their otherwise dramatically different theories. Under Hobbes’s theory, incremental accretions of power that magnify power may make women’s agreement to sub-equal status rational. The commitment of Rawls’s liberal theory to the free exercise of religion precludes prohibiting child-rearing practices that may result in a decrease in women’s status and bargaining power across society. Yet in both theories, practical gender inequality turns out to be a contingent, and potentially remediable, rather than a necessary outcome.