This perspective shares with care theory the conviction that human agents are not fundamentally single-minded, rational, self-interested choice-makers but social beings whose selfhood is constituted and maintained within overlapping relationships and communities. Recognizing the complexity of connection among individuals, their social milieu, their cultural matrix, and political position, some feminists are now calling for adoption of a relational model of autonomy that stresses the web of interconnected (and sometimes conflicting) relationships that shape individuality. The key anthology here, Mackenzie and Soljar’s Relational Autonomy (2000), contains a comprehensive introduction that characterizes feminist critiques of the standard model of autonomy, and constructive reformulations, in more detail. The more relational view of the self developed by feminist moral theory has clear implications for thinking about autonomy. While accepting that the principle of respect for autonomy has been essential to the protection of individual liberty, including of course that of women, the mainstream concepts of autonomy, based on the picture of the self described above, has little relevance to the lives of marginalized groups for whom the possibilities of self-determination are severely constrained by material, social and political structures. A relational conception of autonomy argues that