Hobbes has an unwavering account of gender equality. This is so on two counts. The first count is based on a physiological account of species equality influenced by the work of Harvey. Insofar as biology is destiny, women as bearers and rearers of children have the first experience of dominion. The second count asserts that even if inequality is natural, the dictates of reason enjoin a moral valuation of each as equal. Without this, no social contract, no peace, is possible. For Hobbes, gender equality inheres in what counts as a species being and what reason dictates for society.
Cavendish takes a different view. As Nature abounds with diversity and hierarchy, so do humans. Indeed, heterogeneity is the defining principle of matter, including human matter. But this principle means that there is no arbitrary or conventional barrier based on characteristics of sex (or gender). Her own society constrains women, but her imagined other worlds are populated with empresses, women who are military strategists, and all manner of varieties of humans. Diversity, for her, implies the absence of restraint on the grounds of sex, an equal opportunity approach that will by nature result in difference (inequality).
