One of Susan Okin's main achievements in political philosophy – perhaps her greatest achievement – was to place the institution of the family at the centre of the theory of social justice. She noted how, in the history of political thought, philosophers had assumed for no good reason that family relations were to be regarded as beyond the realm of justice. And in the case of the modern political philosopher whose work she admired most – John Rawls – she detected and criticized a profound ambivalence in his treatment of the family. Rawls wavered between seeing the family as a key component of the basic structure of society – by virtue of its pervasive effects on the life chances of its members – and therefore as central to the theory of justice, and viewing it as a private association on which, accordingly, principles of justice were to bear only peripherally. In Okin's eyes this was symptomatic of the way that the liberal tradition as a whole had failed to take seriously the gendered nature of family relations and to follow through on the implications this has for social justice.