Gender and Citizenship in the Context of Democratisation and Economic Transformation in East Central Europe

Abstract

This chapter explores the theoretical justification for applying the concept of citizenship to an examination of the democratisation process in East Central Europe since 1989 and specifically to an analysis of its gendered nature. It argues that the traditional theoretical focus on individual rights as the basis for citizenship is inadequate in relation to issues of gender equity. Individual rights alone are an insufficient condition for active agency as citizens, especially when compounded with systemic gender inequality. The attainment of political subject status and full citizenship rights is crucially dependent on the ability to exercise otherwise abstract legal rights in the public spheres of politics and the market. In the context of the democratisation process in East Central Europe, problematic as is the category of the state in the wake of state socialism’s overly intrusive version, state (welfare) provision becomes crucial to enable women to access the public sphere as active political and economic agents. Certain systemic forms of gender-based disadvantaging were endemic to the previous state socialist regimes; other forms of gender-specific discrimination have emerged in the processes of economic liberalisation and democratisation which succeeded them. It will be argued that the notion of entitlement facilitates exploration of the links between state, market and household as well as the concept and practice of citizenship. Entitlements go beyond the concept of social rights in emphasising a claim on the state and thus the ability to exercise formal rights in order to realise individual capacities.