Originally published: 1979.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

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.

I. Plato -- Plato and the Greek tradition of Misogyny -- Philosopher queens and private wives -- Female nature and social structure -- II. Aristotle -- Woman's place and nature in a functionalist world -- III. Rousseau -- Rousseau and the modern patriarchal tradition -- The natural woman and her role -- Equality and freedom -- for men -- The fate of Rousseau's heroines -- IV. Mill -- John Stuart Mill, liberal feminist -- V. Functionalism, feminism and the family -- Women and functionalism, past and present -- Persons, women and the law -- Conclusions.

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