Pateman Social Contract

Of course, Pateman goes on to tell us why, elaborating on the implict agreement in a social contract which privileges men in society to formulate the social contract; that implicit agreement, that ‘contract-within-the social contract’ (so to speak) is what Pateman calls the sexual contract. It is the unspoken agreement(s) about the place of women in society, as decided by men that Pateman tries to elucidate, much like Mills in discussing racism and the racial contract (implicit in the social contract) . Whether in matters of business, law, property, economics, or broader domains of culture, there is a rampant privileging of one group over another: men over women. Women are subjugated, or culturally pressured to fulfill the duties of home makers, …show more content…
It is necessary for being able to see where, how and when to interject in the complex, interweaving/interlocking systems of division and subjugation, where valuations of race, sex, or class are drawn,as a means to change them. To see the relations of power in which one’s society emerges, and to be able to question the contracts/agreements in which those relations emerge, is the first (even if not self-sufficient) requirement to being able to modify them and critically change their fundamental, ‘taken-for-granted’ limitations (much as in the sexual, racial, or perhaps, “class contracts” implicit in the social contract), thereby overcoming the effects of things like systemic inequality, based on sex, race, class, or what have you. The principle relation between “seeing the world with new eyes” and the structures/constructions of power in one’s society is essential to note. For the establishment of new zones of power in which the oppressed group facing political alienation, for instance (whether because of race, in Mills’ view, sex in Pateman’s, or even class in Marx and Engels views), requires a new awareness, a “seeing the world with new eyes”, fundamentally.In the context of how we organize society , such a project of vision is necessary for change or adaptation in society to surmount the inherent biases or functional limitations of the social order, itself; to “fix” society when it fails in nourishing its members, or …show more content…
Of course, Mills, Pateman and Marx all present different “awareness” of the structures of power in their society, seeing these structures through different lenses, in different contexts. But their analyses (almost in and of themselves) all seem to help verify this thesis a bit