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.
By:
Susan Moller Okin
Introduction by:
Debra Satz
Imprint: Princeton University Pres
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
Spine: 30mm
Weight: 482g
ISBN: 9780691158341
ISBN 10: 0691158347
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 01 July 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
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
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?
Reviews for Women in Western Political Thought
Okin has written an engaging, serious, careful, and important work that raises the issues of women and politics in their most elemental and pertinent form... A pioneering book. --Benjamin R. Barber, New Republic A brilliant, clear, sustained drive through the murky history of mens ideas about what they wished women to do into the terra incognita of what women can be... [A] major contribution to political thought. --Christina Robb, Boston Globe Excellent... Given the generations of scholars who have ignored the obvious, Okins contribution is tantamount to the child declaring the emperor to be without clothes. Her language is calm, clear, simple, and strong. --Vivian Gornick, Washington Post Okins impressive book makes clear that whatever we may have been taught, we cannot read the great political theorists as though mankind means all of us. --Nannerl Keohane, Ethics
