My research focuses on the political theory of the American philosopher Jean Hampton (1954-1996). Precisely, I analyze Hampton's feminist accounts, which put together gender demands and contract theory - almost a revolutionary operation since the tradition of the social contract was considered totally irreconcilable with gender claims by the majority of contemporary feminist theorists. Starting from the reflections on contractarianism elaborated since the early Eighties, to reach the last posthumous works, I maintain that Hampton’s feminist contractarianism is a fortunate combination of apparently irreconcilable paradigms, whose roots must be traced on the one hand in Thomas Hobbes’ works, on the other hand in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. First of all I found it necessary to analyze the key elements of feminist contractarianism, dealing with theory of games and rational choice theory. The way I see it, Hampton overcomes all the different contractarians approaches that stay at the basis of her philosophical discourse, going through the proposal of a kind of “third way”. I point out how and why Hampton’s system is useful for assessing the intrinsic value of the person and I suggest her feminist proposal could be considered as “a model of procedural justice”, capable of guarantee minimum conditions of fairness in the private sphere
