Rawls was personally a feminist, and his theory of justice, justice as fairness, belongs to the category of liberal feminisms. (See Nussbaum 2003; Baehr 2004.) Understanding feminism as both the conviction that women are equal to men in value and entitled to all the rights and privileges of men, and also as the active effort to transform social reality to match that conviction, Rawls unequivocally embraced feminism. He educated and supported the professional careers of women philosophers on a scale that is both unprecedented and so far unsurpassed. Just by his teaching and mentoring alone, he did more to equalize the playing ield for women in philosophy than anyone else. But more important is the way he transformed social contract theory from its sexually tone-deaf and conservative history. (See Pateman 1988.) His introduction of a “veil of ignorance” that deprived parties to the social contract of knowledge of their gender quite self-consciously forced the theory to treat women as equal citizens.

Rawls was surprised by the backlash from some feminists contending thatjustice as fairness perpetuated women’s subequal status, writing: