Women in Western Political Thought (New Paperback)

In this pathbreaking study of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Mill, Susan Moller Okin turns to the tradition of political philosophy that pervades Western culture and its institutions to understand why the gap between formal and real gender equality persists. Our philosophical heritage, Okin argues, largely rests on the assumption of the natural inequality of the sexes. Women cannot be included as equals within political theory unless its deep-rooted assumptions about the traditional family, its sex roles, and its relation to the wider world of political society are challenged. So long as this attitude pervades our institutions and behavior, the formal equality women have won has no chance of becoming substantive.

Susan Moller Okin (1946-2004) was a prominent feminist philosopher and the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society at Stanford University. Her books include "Justice, Gender, and the Family" and "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?"

Introduction to the 2013 Edition ix

Acknowledgements xix

Introduction 3

PART I. PLATO

1. Plato and the Greek Tradition of Misogyny 15

2. Philosopher Queens and Private Wives 28

3. Female Nature and Social Structure 51

PART II. ARISTOTLE

4. Woman's Place and Nature in a Functionalist World 73

PART III. ROUSSEAU

5. Rosseau and the Modern Patriarchal Tradition 99

6. The Natural Woman and Her Role 106

7. Equality and Freedom - for Men 140

8. The Fate of Rosseau's Heroines 167

PART IV. MILL

9. John Stuart Mill, Liberal Feminist 197

PART V. FUNCTIONALISM, FEMINISM AND THE FAMILY

10. Women and Functionalism, Past and Present 233

11. Persons, Women, and the Law 247

12. Conclusions 274

Appendix to Chapter 2 305

Afterword to the 1992 edition 309

Notes 341

Bibliography 387

Index 399