Nation and Gender in Contemporary Europe by Vera Tolz , Stephanie Booth (review)

Abstract

192 SEER, 86, I, 2008 Tolz, Vera and Booth, Stephanie (eds). Nation and Gender in Contemporary Europe.Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2005. viii + 190 pp. Notes. Appendix. Index. ?55.00. This book consists of an introduction and chapters on 'Political Aspects: East andWest' and on 'ImageManipulation: Media, Advertisements and Cinema', conclusions and a speech delivered by Ch?rie Booth QC on British human rights legislation on immigration, gender and identity.The writers are from theUK, Switzerland, Poland and Russia. The analysed countries are France, theCzech Republic, Switzerland, Romania, Soviet and post-Soviet Societies, Poland and Northern Ireland. Here I focus on the chapters that deal with citizenship and nationality. There are, additionally, three interesting articles on media and cinema in Poland and Northern Ireland. In the introduction Vera Tolz and Stephenie Booth suggest that the significance of connections of nationalism with the formation of democratic states is often ignored. Gender is usually taken for granted, even though it is centrally implicated in political systems.A comparative approach isdeployed in order to demonstrate that democracy and nationalism are linked in gen dered ways. The positions ofwomen and men diverge historically, politically and culturally. Both civic and ethnic visions are encompassed in national communities. The main focuses include ways inwhich gender is incorporated in the creation of nation states and the political processes. SylviaWalby notes that the formation of nations isbased on gender relations.Walby emphasizes that women are active participants in national struggles ? not merely objects. She also notes that gender is implicated in various locations including the global arena. Gender and citizenship have acquired particular inflections in France in the context ofwider debates about the political agenda, as Gill Allwood argues. She discusses the concept of parity that refers to the equal presence of women and men in state institutions. In this context gender is represented as a binary that cannot or should not be overcome. There have been concerns in France that sexual difference is difficult tomaintain in the public sphere, and the entry into that sphere dilutes such differences. This notion of citizen ship eludes gender, and it is considered problematic for this reason. Addition ally, diversity among women is not easy to take into account in this model. For example it isdifficultformigrant women to be integrated into society. Stephanie Booth presents a comparative analysis of Britain and theCzech Republic and examines differentways of including women. Whilst Britain provides an example of state-framed nationalism, the Czech Republic is characterized by a counter-state nation building project. In thiscontext Czech women opted for a strategy that emphasized gender as a tool for emancipa tion. Women were seen as potential saviours of the nation and feminism had littleplace in this formation. British feminists have discussed differences between women and men, but have also considered differences among women, such as social class, ethnicity and sexuality. In the Czech Republic the interests of the state were emphasized, whilst in Britain gender roles were considered to be socially ascribed rather than natural. REVIEWS I93 Swiss patterns are analysed by Regula Ludi, who notes that Switzerland has a strong image as a particularly democratic country whilst at the same time the integration ofwomen into the polity has been thin.Military service is one arena where differences are produced and the protection of women is considered important ? the purpose ofwelfare provision is to protect them rather than to promote their independence. Ludi suggests that events during the Second World War produced a particular kind of trauma, as men had not been able to protect women who suffered from the violence of thewar and were subjected to rape. Although institutionalized gender differences no longer prevail, in the cultural sphere the legacy of themasculine construction of the state is still associated with male citizenship. In Romania the nation has many pasts, as Christina Chiva demonstrates. The tension has been that the idea of a 'Romanian' is linked to nationality and to ethnicity rather than to a more inclusive conceptualization of citizen ship that could facilitate the inclusion ofwomen and minority ethnic groups. Women's campaigning for universal suffrage was not successful and was accomplished by the Communist regime only after the Second World...