Contemporary feminism has attacked the male biases of liberalism, labeling as convenient fictions notions that “citizen” is a gender-neutral concept, or that distributive justice is possible when “universal” laws fail to take the female body into account. When combined with a long tradition of anti-capitalist thought, these critiques add up to an indictment of Enlightenment liberalism, which is then portrayed as a barrier to solving contemporary problems rather than as a basis on which to build.

Among feminist critiques, Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract is powerfully argued and provocative, and has become a classic of feminist theory. Pateman attacks liberalism at its origin in the theories of social contract, beginning with Hobbes's Leviathan but relying heavily as well on the theories of Locke and Rousseau. My argument is not with her views of Locke and Rousseau, but stems from my concern that her critique of Hobbes, which is central to her case that the subjection of women is foundational in liberal contract theory, is wrong about Hobbes and has the effect of alienating feminist theory from contract theory, with potentially harmful consequences for feminist political practice.