Reply: More Similar or More Different?

Abstract

On the basis of a wide range of material, Louise Tilly has provided both a synthesis and an extension of recent work on the history of citizenship rights and women's movements in four states. Comparing France, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, Tilly demonstrates that the citi zenship gained by women in each state often varied in its components, timing, sequence, and outcomes. She shows convincingly that the notion of a standard history or chronology is untenable. At the same time, however, it is possible to point to similarities among the histories of women's citizen ship in these states and to highlight the importance of specific sets of circumstances (such as postwar conditions in the twentieth century) as having focused attention on gender issues and having led to decisions, however divergent, on contested questions of gender and citizenship. Even if there is no standard pattern, then, we need not be reduced to a series of discrete national histories. What we might look for, and what Louise Tilly's essay contributes to, is an understanding of the broad sweep of the pro cesses by which women gained citizenship that does not lose sight of na tional variations in meanings, timing and sequence. Beyond, and yet still within, this general historical analysis, Tilly gives particular attention to the role of women's activism in the achievement of citizenship rights. She argues that long-term developments like women's participation in waged employment and their roles and perceived roles in the family have been very influential in the development of women's citi zenship. By contrast, organized pressure on the established and male politi cal authorities, by suffrage and other women's interest groups, is portrayed here as important but far from decisive in the winning of citizenship rights. On several occasions Tilly points to incongruities between the high level of activism or the apparent organizational strength of women's movements in particular states, notably Britain and the United States, and the relatively early and substantial gains women there made in legal or actual citizenship. Yet, despite these examples and her clear assertion of the primacy of other forces, the essay embodies an ambivalence, for Tilly also insists that politi cal activism must necessarily be an element in the progress of citizenship. This underpins her final point, an insistence that even though further gains in women's citizenship may become more difficult in the future, progress toward this end will go nowhere without organization and struggle in the political sphere. The general lines of argument in Tilly's essay are convincing enough, and her synthesis contributes usefully to the discussions of the historical