Citizenship

Citation:

Kaufman, Joyce, and Kristen Williams. 2010. Women and War: Gender Identity and Activism in Times of Conflict. Sterling: Kumarian Press.

Authors: Joyce Kaufman, Kristen Williams

Abstract:

Women everywhere have long struggled for recognition as equal, productive members of society, worthy of taking part in the political process. These struggles become even more pronounced in times of conflict and war, when the symbolism and myths of womanhood are used to stoke nationalistic ideas about the survival of the state. Yet for all the rhetoric that takes place in their name, it's men who generally make decisions regarding war.

Women and War examines how women respond to situations of conflict. Drawing on both traditional and feminist international relations theory, it explores the roles that women play before, during and after a conflict, how they spur and respond to nationalist and social movements, and how conceptions of gender are deeply intertwined with ideas about citizenship and the state. As Kaufman and Williams show, women do more than respond to conflict situations; they are active agents in their own right shaping political and historical processes. Their conclusions encourage us to rethink the prevalent assumptions of international relations, history and feminist scholarship and theory. (Amazon)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Citizenship, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Nationalism, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 2010

Citation:

McDonagh, Eileen. 2002. “Political Citizenship and Democratization: The Gender Paradox.” The American Political Science Review 96 (3): 535-52.

Author: Eileen McDonagh

Abstract:

This research challenges models of democratization that claim liberal principles affirming the equality of rights-bearing individuals equably enhance the political inclusion of groups marginalized by race, class, or gender. While such explanations may suffice for race and class, this study's quantitative cross-national analysis of women's contemporary officeholding patterns establishes that gender presents a counter case whereby women's political citizenship is enhanced, first, by government institutions that paradoxically affirm both individual equality and kinship group difference and, second, by state policies that paradoxically affirm both individual equality and women's group difference. These findings challenge assumptions about the relationship between political citizenship and democratization, demonstrate how women's political inclusion as voters and officeholders is strengthened not by either a "sameness" principle (asserting women's equality to men as individuals) or a "difference" principle (asserting women's group difference from men) but rather by the paradoxical combination of both, and provide new views for assessing multiculturalism prospects within democratic states.

Topics: Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, Governance, Political Participation

Year: 2002

Citation:

Orloff, Ann Shola. 1993. “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States.” American Sociological Review 58 (3): 303-28.

Author: Ann Shola Orloff

Abstract:

State social provision affects women's material situations, shapes gender relationships, structures political conflict and participation, and contributes to the formation and mobilization of identities and interests. Mainstream comparative research has neglected gender, while most feminist research on the welfare state has not been systematically comparative. I develop a conceptual framework for analyzing the gender content of social provision that draws on feminist and mainstream work. Three dimensions of qualitative variation suggested by power resources analysts are reconstructed to incorporate gender: (1) the state-market relations dimension is extended to consider the ways countries organize the provision of welfare through families as well as through states and markets; it is then termed the state-market-family relations dimension; (2) the stratification dimension is expanded to consider the effects of social provision by the state on gender relations, especially the treatment of paid and unpaid labor; (3) the social citizenship rights/decommodification dimension is criticized for implicit assumptions about the sexual division of caring and domestic labor and for ignoring the differential effects on men and women of benefits that decommodify labor. Two additional dimensions are proposed to capture the effects of state social provision on gender relations: access to paid work and capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household.

Topics: Citizenship, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Governance

Year: 1993

Citation:

Khatib, Lina. 2008. “Gender, Citizenship, and Political Agency in Lebanon.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35 (3): 437–51.

Author: Lina Khatib

Abstract:

This paper examines the condition of women as political agents in Lebanon in the context of legislation and political participation. It focuses on the effect of the Civil War on women's conditions of living in Lebanon, and their lives in the post-war period. War had negative effects on women, reinforcing their patriarchal subjugation, furthering their economic deprivation, and diverting attention from issues like women's rights, which have only added to women's political and social marginalization. The war also had a positive effect on women as it opened up new avenues for them to participate in public life. This paper analyzes gender relations in Lebanon through the frameworks of social change and the rise of civil society, but also emphasizes the challenges facing women in post-war Lebanon, where they are still governed by patriarchal values that hinder their political participation and their identification as full citizens.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Citizenship, Civil Society, Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Women, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Lebanon

Year: 2008

Citation:

Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1993. "Gender and Nation." Ethnic and Racial Studies 16 (4): 621-32. doi: 10.1080/01419870.1993.9993800

Author: Nira Yuval-Davis

Abstract:

The article outlines some of the main dimensions in which gender relations are crucial in understanding and analysing the phenomena of nations and nationalism, and the specific boundaries of inclusions and exclusions that they construct. Three major dimensions of nationalist projects that relate to citizenship, culture and origin are differentiated. In each of them gender relations play specific roles and have mobilized specific struggles. The article looks at the dualistic nature of women's citizenship, as both included and excluded from the general body of citizens. Even when there is a formal equality of women in their political rights as citizens, other modes of exclusion in the political, social and civil spheres continue to operate. The particular ways in which the entry of women into the military has been linked to struggles for women's equality as citizens are examined in this context. In relation to national cultures, both secular and religious, the article examines the ways in which women play the roles of cultural transmitters as well as cultural signifiers of the national collectivity. The last part of the article examines the role of women as biological reproducers of ‘the nation’ and how a variety of means are taken in order to ensure that the biological reproduction will fall within the legitimate boundaries of the collectivity.

Topics: Citizenship, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Religion, Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 1993

Citation:

Pearce, Jenny. 2007. Violence, Power, and Participation: Building Citizenship in Contexts of Chronic Violence. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.

Author: Jenny Pearce

Abstract:

This paper is about civil society participation in two contexts of chronic violence: Colombia and Guatemala. It explores the extent to which civil society organisations can build citizenship in such contexts and simultaneously address violence. It argues that civil society organisations can play a vital role in building citizenship and confronting violent actors and acts of violence. However, in order to address chronic, perpetuating violence and interrupt its transmission through time and space, it is important to clarify the relationship between power and violence. Conventional forms of dominating power correlate with violence. Loss of such power or a bid to gain it can lead to violence, particularly where social constructions of masculinity are affirmed by such behaviour. The paper asks whether the promotion of non-dominating forms of power are needed if we are to tackle the damaging effects on human relationships and progress of willingness to inflict direct physical hurt on the Other. Non-dominating forms of power focus on enhancing everyone’s power potential and capacity for action and promoting communication. If non-violence and non-dominating power gradually become the social norm, this might enhance citizenship and participation in ways that tackle other forms of violence, such as structural violence.

Topics: Citizenship, Civil Society, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Nonviolence, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Colombia, Guatemala

Year: 2007

Citation:

Mooney, Jadwiga E. 2007. "Militant Motherhood Re-Visited: Women's Participation and Political Power in Argentina and Chile." History Compass 5 (3): 975-94.

Author: Jadwiga E. Mooney

Abstract:

This article addresses the immediate and long-term implications of militant motherhood in the Latin American Southern Cone. It contributes a new perspective to the now sizable literature on women's resistance and political participation by comparing militant motherhood under leaderships on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Mothers mobilization could, but did not, by definition, focus on gender equity or feminist goals. Anti-Allende women in Chile demanded military intervention - while the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina requested an end to human rights abuses by the incumbent military regime. Both show how cross-national variation in the objective of militant motherhood still led to similar outcomes. The case studies of Chile and Argentina reveal that militant mothers immediate and long-term success lay in the nature of their resistance and their skillful use of tradition. They expanded traditional understandings of motherhood, and helped overcome the limits of gendered citizenship rights that restricted women's political participation.

Topics: Citizenship, Civil Society, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Political Participation, Rights, Human Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Argentina, Chile

Year: 2007

Citation:

Ali, Shaheen. 2007. Religious Pluralism, Human Rights and Citizenship in Europe: Some Preliminary Reflections on an Evolving Methodology for Consensus. Utrecht: Internsentia.

Author: Shaheen Ali

Abstract:

In part II of the study, the subject of commonalities and similarities between International law and as-Siyar (Islamic International Law) is further explored by Shaheen Sardar Ali. Ali takes the position that not-withstanding the parallel normative origins, and ideological differences of the two systems, there are significant points of concurrence between the two regulatory frameworks." Ali pursues her argument by collating a remarkable array of commonalities in the developmental and contemporary processes of as-Siyar and modern International Law. She argues that in the field of human rights law, the two systems have portrayed and continue to reflect tensions over slavery and women's rights and minority rights. Despite an avowed allegiance to an 'international, extra-territorial and universal' tradition, both as-Siyar and modern international law have deployed expansionist and exploitative strategies. Hegemonic and ideological expansionism, a historic trade-mark of as-Siyar, is visible in the contemporary approaches – adopted by United States foreign policy; 'democracy' and 'human rights' are concepts which have now replaced the pre-modern as-Siyar notion of Jihad, whereby the rights of religious communities are being undermined." The debate over the similarities or differentiation between International law and Islamic legal norms leads to a more fundamental question: Should religious texts or customs or traditions be considered a source [or even a method from which to extract law] of international law alongside treaties, customary international law and general principles?

Topics: Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, International Law, International Human Rights, Religion, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Europe

Year: 2007

Citation:

Goldenberg, Dahlia. 2008. “Grassroots Women’s Leadership and ‘Deepening Democracy’: The Huairou Commission’s Local to Local Dialogue Replication.” Gender & Development 16 (3): 443–56. doi:10.1080/13552070802465292.

Author: Dahlia Goldenberg

Abstract:

Grassroots women's leadership is important if democracy is to be 'deepened' - that is, if representative democracies are to formally include citizen participation in more ways than simply voting in elections. One approach to deepening democracy is to encourage and support spaces - both literal and metaphorical - that enable grassroots women to organise as leaders and engage with local government to achieve change in their communities. This, it is hoped, will enable women to develop ongoing relationships with local government and achieve concrete improvements for their communities. The Huairou Commission and GROOTS International have developed an approach which helps grassroots women's organisations to do this. This article examines how grassroots women's organisations in Uganda, Kenya, and Russia have successfully adapted the Local to Local Dialogue method to their local contexts, empowering and recognising poor women as community leaders.

Topics: Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Women, Political Participation Regions: Africa, East Africa, Asia, Europe Countries: Kenya, Russian Federation, Uganda

Year: 2008

Citation:

Aceves, María Teresa Fernández. 2009. “Citizenship, Ethnicity, Gender, and Mobilization.” Journal of Women’s History 21 (1): 162-71. doi:10.1353/jowh.0.0069.

Author: María Teresa Fernández Aceves

Topics: Citizenship, Ethnicity, Gender, Women Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2009