Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Sexual Contract by Carole Pateman

Review by: Nancy J. Hirschmann
Source: Political Theory , Feb., 1990, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 170-174
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/191486

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Political Theory

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170 POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1990

THE SEXUAL CONTRACT by Carole Pateman. Stanford University Pre

1988. Pp. 300. $39.00 cloth, $12.95 paper.

In contemporary Western society, where woman and men are ostensibly

accorded equal rights and opportunities, why is it that women still eam lower
wages than men, and form the "pink-collar ghetto?" Why are large numbers
of women prostitutes, and why are they on the whole so poor? Why is a
woman who agrees to bear a child for a man who is not her husband dubbed
a "surrogate" mother? And why must this particular contract be one of
specific performance? More generally, why have women not been able to use
the freedom and equality that liberalism articulates to address these inequities
through better contracts? Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract suggests
that the problem is not women's "inability" to negotiate for themselves, to
create "good" contracts: rather, the problem is contract itself. The liberal
construction of contract is based on the subjection of women, so that women's
use of contracts helps perpetuate their oppression.
This apparently bold theme is developed in a book of admirable intellec-
tual rigor. The Sexual Contract is a sound effort to make the problem of
patriarchy comprehensible to "mainstream" theorists, as well as to maintain
theoretical sophistication through feminist categories of analysis. The book
is also testimony to the fact that, sooner or later, all leftist arguments must at
least acknowledge, and eventually incorporate, feminist methods and ideas.
Past understandings of contract and women's relation to the public realm
have generally focused on the fact that women have been "empirically"
excluded: Women have been barred by law and custom from voting and
holding office (the social contract), and from working, from equal employ-
ment opportunities, and from bargaining units such as unions (the employ-
ment contract); and they have been forced by custom and economic means
into marriage and even prostitution (the sexual-slavery contract). Pateman's
analysis of women's condition on this score is thorough and interesting, but
she seeks to go beyond this level. Even more than in her earlier The Problem
of Political Obligation, Pateman adopts a method of theorizing that unites
theory and practice, analytical philosophy, and history. By highlighting ways
in which women's relationship to contract is empirically problematic, Pate-
man sets the context for the ideas and theoretical reasons underlying those
problems. She deconstructs the traditional categories of right, individual,
consent, and contract to open the way to new and deeper understandings of
these terms.
Pateman begins with the claim that "contract is the means through which
modern patriarchy is constituted" (p. 1). She asserts that paternal patriarchy

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 BOOKS IN REVIEW 171

derives from women's subordination; "A man's power as a fath

he has exercised the patriarchal right of a man (a husband)
wife)" (p. 3); "sex right or conjugal right must necessarily pre
offatherhood" (p. 87, her emphasis). In the rejection by Lock
father-patriarchy as a basis for political right, through the es
the social contract, Pateman argues that the foundation of pat
women are considered naturally subject to men -was not eliminated but
merely transformed into "fraternal patriarchy," where the "brotherhood" of
men as a group rules over women.
What is "modern" about this patriarchy is the contractual "story" it
imposes on relations between men and women; the social contract is based
on the sexual contract. Why since Hobbes, she asks, has sex right "so rarely
been seen as a example of political power?" (p. 54) And why do theorists
simultaneously feel compelled to hide this fact by couching women's sub-
jection in terms of voluntary contract? The answer is that the sexual contract
founds civil right; but this "origin of political right must either be repressed
or reinterpreted [as a contract] if the creation of civil society is to be
represented as a victory over patriarchy, and the sexual contract is to remain
hidden" (p. 108). The failure to identify fraternal patriarchy is a fundamental
source of the difficulties that women face in attempting to achieve equality
within modern capitalist society; "liberty and equality are the attributes of
the fraternity who exercise the law of male sex-right ... what better conjur-
ing trick than to insist that 'fraternity' is universal and nothing more than a
metaphor for community" (p. 114). In identifying fratemity as "the commu-
nity of men," Pateman demonstrates women's exclusion at the root of
liberalism.
The central problem with contract according to Pateman is the idea of
property in the person: that one can contract out one's services without
actually contracting out oneself. This "myth" enables contractarians to assert
that those who are in subordinate positions are there by choice; and since
their positions are a product of choice, they have expressed their freedom
rather than limited it by joining in the employment, slave, or sexual contract.
This myth of contract must be preserved, because it allows liberalism to
safeguard the subordination of nonwhites and women. Thus "the 'individual'
is a patriarchal category" (p. 168); the individual as owner of property in the
person who can contract out that property - and, indeed, finds meaning as an
"individual" only through such contracts -is a conception that derives from
institutionalized relations of oppression disguised as freedom. Accordingly,
modern political societies bases on social contracts do not merely exclude
women (and people of color, although Pateman states that this is not her main

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172 POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1990

focus), but indeed preclude them, as conjugal or sex-right becomes a cen

source of men's political power.
Pateman carries this further by arguing that the sexual contract founds
employments contract, just as it did the original, or social, contract. In
exploring the "similarities and differences between slaves, servants a
workers and whether the subjection of wives might throw light onto o
forms of subordination" (p. 117), Pateman claims that "capitalism and c
have been constructed as modern patriarchal categories" (p. 135). Pointi
out that " a (house)wife does not contract out her labour power to her
husband. She is not paid a wage . . . because her husband has command over
the use of her labour by virtue of the fact that he is a man" (p. 135), Pateman
concludes that "the terms of the sexual contract ensure that all men... form
an aristocracy of labour" (p. 139).
This "aristocracy" - although Pateman could have retained the term "fra-
ternity" with greater effect - takes on even more significance when Pateman
turns to perhaps the most pernicious myths of contract, namely, prostitution
and surrogacy. Both of these contracts provide a heightened and even
frightening meaning of the notion of property in the person, as prostitutes
and surrogate mothers are both seen as contracting parts of their bodies to
serve male desire. Pateman presents a particularly vivid illustration of how
contract can be used to produce slavery for women, and that contract is deeply
problematic not just in how it is used, but in itself. While the problem of
contract is seen as a problem about women, it is actually a problem about
men, she holds: Why do men demand that women be sexually available on
demand? Why do some men feel such a compulsion to pass on their genes
when their wives cannot bear children? (Indeed, why have we been able to
develop the technology that provides this option to men, when birth control
is still so primitive?) These are the most deconstructive readings in the book,
as Pateman takes as her "texts" the actual, contractual practices involving
women's historically most essential characteristics: namely, "sex," as op-
posed to "gender."
Indeed, in closing, Pateman argues that feminist discussions of gender
often hide the fact that the problem is sex. "An answer to the question whether
sex means men's mastery is writ large from all sides in the books, magazines,
films, videos, peep-shows and other commodities of the sex industry. One of
the more remarkable features of contemporary political relations is that the
answer is so seldom connected to the question" (p. 225). But her conclusion
is unsatisfying; sex may be at the heart of the oppressive dimensions of
contract, but what specifically is the problem about sex? Is it heterosexual
relations themselves, particularly intercourse, as some radical feminists

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 BOOKS IN REVIEW 173

claim, or male attitudes about sex? Are those attitudes products o

i.e., biological or of gender, culturally mediated attitudes about
power over them? If the latter, then why should Pateman urge t
of gender? If the former, how can those be changed? The reader
the uncomfortable feeling that if sex is the problem, celibacy is
but we are equally sure this is not what Pateman intends. And wh
with contract? Do we merely throw it out completely? Do othe
agreement take its place? Given the ambitious scope of her stud
to these questions is hardly expected, but a few suggestive comm
be in order.
This weakness highlights one overarching problem I had with t
wise incisive book: The "deeper level" that Pateman strikes at n
quite deeply enough. She shows how sex, slavery, and capitalis
twined, not merely parallel, but she does not make the obvious cl
reason for their interrelation is epistemological. For Pateman's
truly challenge the positivist underpinnings of liberalism. This is
her discussion of Hegel in chapter 6, but not fully realized. She
power of Hegel's master/slave dialectic to provide guidance, holding that
"the master and slave, like the capitalist and proletarian, are both men;" their
common gender allows them to transcend this relationship "and eventually
meet as equals in the civil society of the Philosophy of Righ"' (p. 178). But
because the social compact is based on the sexual contract, "a man cannot
receive acknowledgement as an equal from his wife ... a wife cannot be an
'individual' or a citizen, able to participate in the public world" (p. 179). Yet
she misses the point that because men need to grant women some minimal,
even perverse recognition - as Pateman points out, prostitution is about men
demanding sex from women; men rape women, not animals or plants -
women gain the potential to empower themselves by defining reality in their
own terms: For instance, a woman's prosecution of her husband for rape is,
within the construct, that Pateman has defined, a revolutionary act. This may
mean that Hegel's story of transformation to Geist is rewritten, but it also
indicates that a transformation is possible.
Her rejection of such possibility prevents her from making the positive
claim for a feminist epistemology which could transform the meaning of
contract into other forms of agreement. Without an account of how and why
the liberal's understanding of "reality" is itself sex-biased, the liberal will not
be convinced; s/he is still able to reply that freedom and equality are sexually
neutral, and that what we need are better contracts. So the dialogue between
liberal and feminist continues on two different planes of understanding.

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174 POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1990

Pateman's argument indeed operates at this epistemological level, but she

needs to make an explicit recognition of this fact to complete her argument.
But these criticisms do not substantially detract from the considerable
achievement of this work: Indeed, it is testimony to the book's insightful
analysis of patriarchy, and its theoretical richness that such questions can be
asked. The Sexual Contract is a welcome addition to political theory and
feminist scholarship, and is a particular boon to those of us who try to do
both.

-Nancy J. Hirschmann
Swarthmore College

STATES AND COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

by Pierre Birnbaum. Cambridge, England and New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1988. Pp. 232. $39.50.

Pierre Birnbaum is a political sociologist in the classical tradition. In-

formed by the likes of Weber and Durkheim, he identifies a major theoretical
problem: the relationship between forms of state and expressions of collec-
tive action. He then creates an analytical schema by which to investigate a
breathtaking range of comparative and historical cases. His major arguments
are two: "Very few states are really states" (p. 6); and the state is an
independent variable with determinant influence on the nature of the collec
tive actions that arise within its jurisdiction.
The first argument, although highly contentious, follows from Birnbaum's
characterization of the ideal-typical state as highly differentiated. This "im-
plies the institutionalisation of the state, the formation of a tightly-knit
bureaucratic apparatus which is both meritocratic and closed-off to various
external intrusions, an administrative law and a secular approach" (p. 6). In
this Francocentric view, only the French state is a true state; the American
and British states are nonstates except in a juridical sense. To avoid further
linguistic difficulties, he labels states along a continuum from strong (e.g.,
the French) to weak (e.g., the American and British).
An identification of a strong state with the features of Birnbaum's ideal-
typical state obfuscates one of the most interesting features of states: Seem-
ingly absolute governmental power often is less effective in achieving the
policy ends of key state actors than governmental power that is, to use
Birnbaum's terms, less differentiated. Birnbaum makes this point himself
in his discussion of the "efficacy" of British representation in containing
class- and ethnic-based political struggle (p. 149). In Of Rule and Revenue

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