I have already mentioned that Kant thinks women should not have "civil personality" (and the same goes for servants, hirelings, etc.); women have a "purely inherent existence" as servants, etc. do; and the head of household should have "a right to persons akin to a right to things" and he can bring back his wife, children, and servants "in his control by his unilateral choice" if they run away. Kant's refusal to accord rights to women is based upon his conception of women's lack of practical reason:
***** The content of woman's great science, rather, is humankind, and among humanity, men. Her philosophy is not to reason, but to sense. In the opportunity that one wants to give to women to cultivate their beautiful nature, one must always keep this relation before his eyes. One will seek to broaden their total moral feelings and not their memory, and that of course not by universal rules but by some judgment upon the conduct that they see about them. (Kant, _Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime_) *****
While Kant is not as obsessively misogynistic as Rousseau, his verdict that women are by nature unable to reason and judge for themselves as men can is clear. The conception of women as devoid of reason (if not sense) and the denial of women's political rights went hand in hand for most Enlightenment philosophers.
In contrast to Kant, Hobbes, one of the few materialists in the history of philosophy, does not believe in the natural inequality between men and women. On the contrary, in the Hobbesian state of nature, men and women are not only equal, but women, not men, have the "parental dominion" over children:
***** The right of dominion by generation is that which the parent hath over his children, and is called PATERNAL; and is not so derived from the generation, as if...the parent had dominion over his child because he begat him....For, as to the generation, God hath ordained...there be always two that are equally parents....And whereas some have attributed the dominion to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex, they misreckon in it. For there is not always the difference of strength, or prudence between the man and the woman, as that the right can be determined without war. In commonwealths, this controversy is decided by the civil law; and for the most part (but not always), the sentence is in favour of the father, because, for the most part, commonwealths have been erected by the fathers, not by the mothers of families....
If there is no contract, the dominion is in the mother. For in the condition of mere nature, where there are no matrimonial laws, it cannot be known who is the father unless it be declared by the mother: and therefore the right of dominion over the child dependeth on her will, and is consequently hers. (Hobbes, _Leviathan_) *****
A believer in practical equality of all human beings in the faculties of minds and bodies, Hobbes doesn't offer a typical justification of women's subordination based upon the alleged natural inequality of sexes. Instead, he provides a materialist explanation for the subordination of women in "commonwealths": "because, for the most part, commonwealths have been erected by the fathers, not by the mothers of families...". Hobbes doesn't use his reasoning to argue for gender equality in "commonwealths" -- far from it; however, his materialism is preferable to Kant's idealism, in that Hobbes at least doesn't spin a theory that naturalizes gender oppression in an effort to reconcile the subordination of women (and the working class) with the pretended universalism of laws & reason.
Yoshie