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Women, Citizenship and Difference
Citizenship defines the political, social and economic entitlements of a full member of a political community. It also demarcates the boundary of state power from the sphere exclusive to the citizen. It creates an abstract, legal, universal, normative concept of equality of all. It thus tends to preserve the inequality of access to the resources of liberty at the start and extenuates them. Balancing requires creation of special citizenship entitlements on grounds of age (old and young), skills and education, health and nutrition, gender, poverty and protection of minorities. This creates difference. This difference is contested by the proponents of equality as perpetuation of identity particularly in the area of culture. The issue of protection of culture has assumed much greater importance in the post-modern world. This can be resolved only by a dialogue. Citizenship thus becomes a historically contextualised concept, multilayered in one community and across communities, and dialogical. Post-colonial globalisation has added new dimensions to these entitlements e.g., environment and ecological rights, international human rights, rights of migrants and refugees, ethnic and trans-world cultures, protection of those vulnerable to globalisation etc. This collection examines many of these issues in the special context of gender and sexual prohibitions. The collection is divided in four parts. Part I, "Dialogical Citizenship" deals with concepts. Part II, "Exclusionary Citizenship" shows how women are deprived of even their normal entitlements. Four studies dealing with female education in Afghanistan, idea of difference and education in the new constitution of South Africa, special provisions in the population policies of the US to benefit white middle class whole-time mother as an icon of family and discriminating against others and lastly, discrimination against nomadic female vis a vis sedentary women in Ireland implicitly sanctioned by the constitution form this part. Part III deals with multiculturalism, human rights of immigrants, refugees fleeing gender persecution, and a study of demand for application of Islamic personal laws in England. Part IV deal with issues of globalisation. Except for two Peruvians and one Afghan, all contributors are from the developed world holding distinguished academic jobs in Western universities. Hence the absence of flavour of the South. Acute problems of female infanticide, adverse sex ratio, rampant crimes against women in metros, very low female literacy, massive domestic violence, deaths during child birth, absence of large female mass from public space, preponderance of the concept of private in family life etc. do not find mention here. However, many of the issues raised have universal application apart from the theoretical discussion of a very high order For example, the study of problems of female education in Afghanistan point out to the dilemma of the programme being put in high gear both by the westernising King Amanullah and the socialist regime of Najibullah on the one hand and opposed and suppressed ruthlessly by ideologically driven tribal conglomerate of Taliban on the other. Does it mean that domestic cultures have no internal resources to provide space for empowerment of the female? Not so, is the answer from the study of Mothers’ Movement in Latin America. This movement used the accepted norm of compassion of a mother to extend its network to outreach the poorer and deprived, particularly the girls and thus empowered itself. We saw a similar movement 10 years ago in Haryana when rural women came out in large numbers and networking their movement forced the issue of temperance in political debate making it possible for a prohibitionist agenda to win state elections. This collection is an excellent read for students of political philosophy and those interested in gender issues.
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THIS is a selection of 14 papers
presented at a conference held in 1996 in London. The subject of the conference
forms the title of this selection. A masterly introduction by the editors
summarises the papers, links them and puts forward suggestions for future
action to secure special citizenship rights for women.