This article discusses the relationship between liberalism and feminism through the work of two feminist scholars, Carole Pateman and Martha Nussbaum. This is an important issue for feminism, and one in which the problems associated with public-private and nature-culture dichotomies, inherited from liberalism, are fundamental. In this regard, we will discuss Carole Pateman and Martha Nussbaum's positions on the matter. Our choice of authors is due to the fact that both share many of same premises and conclusions, and because their divergences are located primarily around problems in which feminism is "added on" to political liberalism. Thus, in carrying out a discussion through both positions, we minimize the risk that the analysis of the debate move little beyond the critique that numerous theories have directed toward liberalism, and offer what can be a fruitful entry into one of the most controversial points in contemporary feminist theory. Nussbaum and Pateman seem to coincide regarding their conception of gender equality. In the criticism that both of them direct toward the nature-culture relationship and to the formalism of abstract equality, it becomes evident that neither seeks to attribute either power or the oppression of women to nature's designs. In both authors, it is very clear that what they consider relevant for the organization of a just society in terms of gender is the way in which a society places value on biological differences and what implications this has for the distribution of social goods. Nussbaum, however, believes that this equation can be dealt with within liberal theory, as long as it is subjected to changes which free it from theoretical problems linked to the conservative stance of the first liberal philosophers.
feminism; feminist theory; political liberalism; gender equality; nature and culture; public and private