Women's Citizenship Research Articles

Love, Family Values and Reconciliation for All, but What about Rights, Justice and Citizenship for Women? TheFSLN, the Women's Movement, and Violence against Women inNicaragua

This article explores the apparent contradictions of theFSLN's commitment to both ‘restoring’ women's rights regarding violence against women and promotingChristian family values and reconciliation. It proposes an explanation based on the state's use of moral regulation to make a personified patriarchal social order seem normal by encouraging consent and, when necessary, applying coercion. Improved formal recognition of rights is belied by the continued inappropriate use of mediation and other practices that blame women, naturalise violence, and contribute to aggressors' impunity. Furthermore, the government has sanctioned aggressive tactics against feminists and women's organisations, who counter this social order with active citizenship.

Internal Variation in Norm Localization: Implementing Security Council Resolution 1325 in Israel

The article explores the localization process of Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325 (Women, Peace and Security) in Israel after the Second Intifada . An analysis of four forms of interpretation developed in 2000-2010 by local and international actors: protest, political dialog, legal reforms, and transformative actions, reveals a selective localization pattern that goes far beyond conflict-related women's rights. This variation was linked to the nature of interactions between civil society organizations and governmental agencies and could be explained by two national-level factors: (i) despite the escalation of political violence the State of Israel continued to develop national machineries promoting gender equality for women citizens, a process that minimized state dependency on international mechanisms; (ii) by using the universal language of SCR 1325 to construct, redefine, and reinforce domestic identities and interests, governmental agencies and women's groups were in fact seeking new forms of political legitimacy. I argue that the normative language of SCR 1325 proved to be especially beneficial on the civil society level, enabling women's organizations to survive the generally unfavorable domestic opportunity structure during the Second Intifada . However, traditional state-centered policies and perceptions of women's political participation remain a determining factor in explaining their effectiveness and success.

Women as Active Citizens: Glasgow and Edinburgh c.1918–1939

This article examines evidence of active political engagement by women in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the inter-war years of the twentieth century. While discussing the wider context of women's political activities in this period, in terms of party politics and the range of women's organisations in existence, it focuses in particular on Women Citizens’ Associations, Societies for Equal Citizenship and Co-operative Women's Guild branches. Comparing interventions by such women's organisations in the two cities around the selected themes of political representation, housing, ‘moral and social hygiene’, and contraception, the article demonstrates that women's organisations participated in public debates and campaigns to advance what they perceived as women's interests. Temporary alliances around issues such as the regulation of prostitution and provision of contraceptive advice brought together a range of women's organisations, but class differences in perspectives became increasingly apparent in this period, particularly in Glasgow. The issues addressed by women's organisations covered the spectrum of ‘equal rights’ and ‘welfare feminism’, although they did not necessarily identify as feminist. Common to all organisations, however, was a commitment to active citizenship, with women becoming a recognised part of local political networks in this period, although they remained poorly represented in parliament.

The achievement of female suffrage in Europe: on women's citizenship

This article lays out the theoretical framing underlying the gendered construction of citizenship in Western political thought during the transition to modernity; describes the relevant actors in the fight for female suffrage and the impact that the separate spheres of ideology had on both the narratives supporting and resisting female suffrage, and on the selective and piecemeal way in which suffrage was eventually won by women in European countries. Furthermore, it identifies the main factors accounting for women's earlier or later achievement of suffrage in different European nations and, exploring the connection between women's access to voting rights and to civil and social rights, it retells a story of women's citizenship which is an inverted image of that developed by T.H. Marshall on the basis of the male paradigm. It finally brings us to the present to discuss the persistent political under-representation of women in Europe, as well as a growing awareness about the need to ensure women's full citizenship through measures that seek the incorporation of women in male spheres of power and the disestablishment of the sexual contract, something which the historical conquest of suffrage could not achieve by itself.

Civil education in the theory and practice of Women’s Civil Work Association in the Second Polish Republic

One of the main aims of Women’s Civil Work Association (Związek Pracy Obywatelskiej Kobiet) (1928-1939): the largest and the most influential women’s organisation of the Sanation political camp in Poland in the interwar period, was the creation of a new model of a woman citizen and forming and educating women, in concordance with ideological and political ideas of the Sanation (the state-forming idea of J. Piłsudski), to be “a new type of citizens”, aware of their rights and duties, who take an interest in the affairs of the state and who take an active stance towards the strengthening of the new independent state. The Association tried to achieve this aim by organising various forms and methods of civil education, setting up and running various educational, supportive, an economic institutions, which made it possible for the Association to bring into effect its ideas, including the main goal, that is, the creation of a modern, active, and responsible woman citizen.

Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship, experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.

‘Building a New and Better Order’? Women and Jury Service in England and Wales, c.1920–70

The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act extended women's citizenship by enabling them to serve as magistrates and jurors in the country's law courts. Yet while the proportion of women magistrates rose steadily over the next fifty years to reach almost half, even in the 1960s juries remained overwhelmingly male, largely as a result of the continuation of outdated rules concerning jury qualification which remained unreformed until the 1970s. This article analyses the reasons for the delay in reforming the law on jury composition and examines attempts by feminists to bring about change. It argues that the continued tendency among the legal profession and others to regard the criminal law as ‘a man's world’ was especially salient in delaying further reform of juries, but that by the 1960s a combination of efforts by women's organisations and changing cultural attitudes enabled the achievement of gender equality on juries. It also contends that the eventual reform was a success for women's organisations associated with ‘first-wave’ feminism which highlighted the jury issue in the early 1960s.

Women's Citizenship in Northern Ireland after the 1998 Agreement

This article explores the consequences for women's citizenship that arise from the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement. It argues that, despite the promises of inclusion and equality set out in the peace document, subsequent institutional arrangements and policy decisions have retained gendered exclusions and reasserted gender stereotypes. With the further institutionalisation of ethnonationalism as the dominant political discourse through the changes ratified in the St Andrews Agreement, the political settlement has failed to address fully the gendered legacy of conflict and fulfil the democratic promises of advancing women's citizenship claims. However, despite persisting constraints, women continue the pattern of active civic engagement in the community and voluntary sector and pursue lobbying strategies that strive to make their claims relevant in institutionalised policymaking spheres. At the same time, the article maintains that the emergence of new forms of feminist grass-roots activism, exemplified by the Belfast Feminist Network, contributes to enhancing women's citizenship claims in the broader cultural and social context of post-Agreement Northern Ireland.

Marriage, Métissage , and Women's Citizenship: Revisiting Race and Gender in Claire de Duras's Ourika

Marriage, Métissage, and Women's Citizenship:Revisiting Race and Gender in Claire de Duras's Ourika Adeline Koh "Qui voudra jamais épouser une nègresse?"1 Many critics consider Claire de Duras's 1823 novel Ourika to be one of the most penetrating portrayals of racism of its time. In the brief novel, a young black Senegalese girl is saved at a young age from a life of slavery and raised by a white woman in an aristocratic French milieu as an adoptive daughter. Petted and praised by members of her benefactress's salon until she comes of age, she remains blissfully unaware of any form of racial prejudice. That is, until she realizes that she will never be able to marry a white Frenchman because she is black. She then descends into a depressive spiral from which she never completely recovers. Literary scholars often praise Ourika for its sensitive insight into the psychological plight of its young protagonist, frequently comparing her to the alienated narrator in Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks.2 At the same time, critics celebrate Duras for her insight into the black condition. Alison Finch has praised Duras as being "humanely free of racism" and declared that "no other French woman was as far-reaching or imaginative on the question of birth-disadvantages,"3 while Joan DeJean and Margaret Waller argue that when Ourika is compared with other works of its time, "its originality and its author's daring are evident."4 In what follows I will argue that Duras's Ourika is not as sympathetic towards the condition of black people as has been commonly interpreted. In particular, I will concentrate on revisiting the marriage device in Ourika, and show that the way Duras deploys the marriage trope reveals substantial [End Page 15] anxiety as it represents the potential for social equality between black and white women. Through a historical examination of political changes to marriage for French women after the Revolution, a survey of the historical status of métissage in the colonies and a close reading of two scenes in the novel, I seek to demonstrate that the way Duras eradicates all possibility of her black protagonist's marriage in France is indicative of a larger apprehension towards the black female subject. Current scholarship has neglected the political dimensions of marriage in the novel.5 Except for Chantal Bertrand-Jennings,6 who has argued that marriage in Ourika provides a way for the narrative to give voice to the silenced feminine subject, scholars such as Lucy Schwartz,7 Sylvia Romanowskie,8 and Alison Finch9 look at marriage under the umbrella of German Romanticism, arguing that marriage—or Ourika's inability to marry—is a simple plot element within narratives of this movement, or, as Doris Kadish and Françoise Massardier-Kenney suggest, that it functions as a critique of racism as marriage is intertwined with a critique of patriarchal interests.10 However, in the following analysis I shall contend that marriage and race combine to form a threatening possibility: that black women have the potential to become the civic peers of white women within the French social contract via marriage. In this manner, this paper contributes to a growing reassessment of Duras's racial sympathies. Christopher Miller has recently introduced ambivalence into Duras criticism by arguing that Duras's inherited colonial holdings in Martinique and their profits complicate current interpretations of Ourika, going so far as to ask: "As she was creating one of the most sympathetic representations of an African in French literature, did she still hold title to hundreds of slaves in Martinique?"11 My strategy in this essay is to build on Miller's exploratory study through this reading of Ourika. My intention is not to recast Duras as a pro-slavery figure. Neither is it to argue that Duras was unsympathetic towards the plight of African slaves in the French colonies. Rather, it is to show how a historically informed postcolonial reading practice can illuminate the ways in which even a canonical anticolonial text such as Ourika may still be fundamentally ambiguous in terms of civic equality between blacks and whites. Race, Sex, and Marriage...

‘Where the little life unfolds’: women's citizenship, moral regulation and the production of scale in early twentieth-century Halifax, Nova Scotia

This article examines the contingent connections between moral regulation and the production of scale in the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the early twentieth century, a group called the Halifax Local Council of Women (HCW) unveiled an important program of moral regulation. Targeting the lives of the city's children, this program aimed to inculcate moral norms primarily through the reorganization of space. In the interest of morality, the HCW campaigned against various unwholesome spaces in the city and sought to introduce new, more wholesome spaces for the city's children. At first glance, the HCW's program of moral regulation would seem to involve a transfer of women's activities and capacities from the scale of the ‘home’ to the ‘local’ scale; rather than caring for children in the home, the HCW would now be caring for them wherever the ‘little life unfolds.’ A closer examination, however, shows that the local scale was not so much occupied as it was produced by the HCW and its morality program. In tracking the co-production of moral regulation and geographical scale, this paper aims to reveal the spatial conditions through which one group of people seeks to manage the lives of others.

North America in question: regional integration in an era of economic turbulence

Table of Contents Introduction - North America in Question Part I - North America and Political-Economic Turbulence Chapter 1 - Global Economic Crisis and Regionalism in North America: Region-ness in Question? Chapter 2 - Immovable Object or Unstoppable Force? Economic Crisis and the Social Construction of North America Chapter 3 - Continental Governance, Post Crisis - Where is North America Going? Chapter 4 - The Mexican Political-Security Crisis: Implications for the North American Community Part II - North American Problems without North American Governance Chapter 5 - North American Community from Above and from Below: Working Class Perspectives on Economic Integration and Crisis Chapter 6 - Energy and the Environment - Prospects for New Forms of Continental Governance Chapter 7 - Borders and Security in North America Chapter 8 - Immigration and the Flows of People Part III - Democratic Deficit, New Actors and Responses to the Crisis Chapter 9 - Plus Ca Change: Double-Bilateralism and the Demise of Trilateralism Chapter 10 - Paradiplomacy: States and Provinces in the Emerging Governance Structure of North America Chapter 11 - (Re)Thinking the .New. North America through Women's Citizenship Struggles in Mexico Chapter 12 - Democratic Deficits and the Role of Civil Society in North America: the SPP and Beyond Conclusion: Will North America Survive?

Territorial Pluralism and Family-Law Reform: Conflicts between Gender and Culture Rights in Federations, North and South

This article considers how gender conflicts and cultural rights conflicts affect family-law reform. UN Women maintains that women experience harms including violence because of legal pluralism, i.e. multiple family law codes. The article explores if federal territorial pluralism involves similar dangers. Since women's citizenship depends on equality, security and autonomy in family relations, the question is whether federal governments can regulate legal pluralism and enact reforms required under international law. Although in some federations, unregulated territorial pluralism harms women, some federal governments regulate legal pluralism effectively and reform family law codes. State capacity, political will, and manageable diversity all contribute to positive outcomes.

From Citizens to Enemy Aliens: Oregon Women, Marriage, and the Surveillance State during the First World War

Between the days of June 17 and June 26, 1918, Oregon government officials under U.S. Presidential Proclamation collected family and work history information, photographs, and finger prints of 1,484 women from across the state of Oregon. These women were considered “enemy aliens” because they had emigrated from Germany, or, as was the case for 394 of these women, because they married German men thereby forfeiting their U.S. Citizenship. In this article, historian Kimberly Jensen brings to life this collection of Female Enemy Alien Registration records. During a time when a woman's citizenship relied on that of her husband's, Jensen reveals the expressions of life, character, and subtle forms of protest among the registration records of file boxes in the Oregon Historical Society Research Library collections.

The U.S. women's jury movements and strategic adaptation: a more just verdict

1. Introduction: the women's jury movements and strategic adaptation 2. Theorizing social movement strategic adaptation 3. Broadening women's citizenship: a history of US women's rights 4. Responding to political defeats 5. Countering public opposition and indifference 6. Taking advantage of discursive and cultural opportunities 7. Turning the movement around 8. Comparing the movements: qualitative comparative analysis 9. Final thoughts on strategic adaptation and social movement strategy.

From Citizens to Enemy Aliens: Oregon Women, Marriage, and the Surveillance State during the First World War

Between the days of June 17 and June 26, 1918, Oregon government officials under U.S. Presidential Proclamation collected family and work history information, photographs, and finger prints of 1,484 women from across the state of Oregon. These women were considered “enemy aliens” because they had emigrated from Germany, or, as was the case for 394 of these women, because they married German men thereby forfeiting their U.S. Citizenship. In this article, historian Kimberly Jensen brings to life this collection of Female Enemy Alien Registration records. During a time when a woman's citizenship relied on that of her husband's, Jensen reveals the expressions of life, character, and subtle forms of protest among the registration records of file boxes in the Oregon Historical Society Research Library collections.

'¿Qué quieren las mujeres?': Ciudadanía femenina y escrituras de la intimidad en la Argentina de inicios del siglo XX

Las llamadas 'escrituras de la intimidad' - autobiografías, cartas, relatos de viajes, diarios íntimos - permiten analizar los deslizamientos posibles entre lo público y lo privado en una coyuntura histórica en la cual los derechos para cada sexo estaban claramente predefinidos en cada uno de los espacios de acción. Es decir que, desnaturalizando el presente al narrarlo, las 'escrituras de la intimidad' permiten pensar las estrategias de las mujeres, confinadas por ley al espacio doméstico, de proyectar sus voces en la esfera pública. A partir del irresoluble enigma planteado por una de las primeras voces masculinas que defendieron los derechos de las mujeres en Argentina - el socialista Enrique Del Valle Iberlucea -, aquí analizo cómo es contada - ¿vivida, representada? - la ciudadanía por las propias mujeres. Para ello, analizo los relatos de viajes de la escritora y maestra normal Ada María Elflein (1880-1919).

Women’s Empowerment Revisited: From Individual to Collective Power Among the Export Sector Workers of Bangladesh

Summary Bangladesh has become known as something of a success in advancing gender equality since the 1990s. There have been rapid gains in a number of social and economic domains, yet by most objective standards the current condition and status of women and girls within Bangladeshi society remain low. Rapid progress has come about under conditions of mass poverty and interlocking forms of social disadvantage, political instability and under-development, overlain with persistent ‘classic’ forms of patriarchy. Mass employment of women and girls in the country's flagship export sector – the readymade garments (RMG) sector – has been one of the more visible and prominent changes in women's lives since its late 1970s' introduction. Whether and the extent to which RMG or garments employment has changed the lives of women workers for the better has been the subject of much debate, and the research and analysis it has generated offers valuable insights into the processes of economic and social empowerment for poor women in low income developing countries. Yet as this paper notes, close observers of social change in Bangladesh have become dissatisfied with the limits of a focus on individual economic empowerment. Paid work may enable some women to negotiate the ‘structures of constraint’ that shape their lives and relationships, but what of the structures of constraint themselves? In the Bangladesh context the experience of mass RMG employment has given rise to questions about whether women have gained greater recognition as citizens with rights and roles as carers in the private and political actors within the public spheres. Revisiting the question of women's empowerment in this context means interrogating whether paid employment has contributed to investments in the education and skills of women and girls, improvements in their public safety and rights to occupy public space. Given labour militancy in the sector and its partial successes in raising the minimum wage, what has the experience of labour politics meant for women's political empowerment? Drawing mainly on the rich literature available on women's RMG employment, this paper explores the wider and less well-documented effects of such employment on public policy relating to gender equality in these areas. It concludes that the overall direction of change in the industry points plainly to the need for investments in worker productivity, with a host of implications for women's work and gender equality more broadly. Factory owners have to date shown few signs of recognising their interests in supporting better state health, education and public safety for women and girls, or changing management practices to retain and raise productivity of skilled women workers. Yet with downward pressure on wages increasingly effectively resisted by workers at a time of global economic volatility and rising living costs, the tide may now be turning for the RMG workers of Bangladesh. Productivity gains require the state and the industry to treat women workers as full citizens with public policies that promote their skills and safety and respect, and which guarantee the representation of their rights and demands. RMG employment continues to be a source of empowerment for women in Bangladesh, but social and economic change means that that power now depends less on the individual economic effects of paid work on household decision-making than it once did. RMG employment is increasingly a source of power for women because of its more collective effects on women's citizenship and political agency. This matters all the more because of how this group is exposed to the volatilities of the global economy.

Forced Marriage vs. Family Reunification: Nationality, Gender and Ethnicity in German Migration Policy

It is a widely recognised European phenomenon that practices associated with minority populations provoke political actors, who have previously not related to gender equality, to participate in debates – apparently on the behalf of women. This tendency can be observed in the policy debate on the German New Immigration Act (2007): restrictive regulations on family reunification are said to protect migrant young women from forced marriage. This paper argues that discursive processes of ethno-gendering and class-gendering (intersectional hyper-visibility) are mobilised at the expense of (women's) citizenship status (intersectional invisibility). Such constructions of ‘the other’ as unworthy of equal treatment have to be understood against the backdrop of an ethno-cultural citizenship regime, which restrictive migration policies seek to maintain. The contribution of this paper to citizenship studies is not only empirical, but also methodological: it introduces a model of Intersectional Discursive Policy Analysis that helps to understand discursive constructions of citizenship.

The Woman Citizen: A Study of How News Narratives Adapt to a Changing Social Environment

This narrative analysis of the suffragist journal the Woman Citizen, published from 1917 to 1927, addresses the challenges social activists face when reframing progressive narratives. This article provides insight into the press as a site for identity; considers how a magazine positions itself to effect social advances; and explores the hurdles for a reform magazine to survive when the landscape changes, as it did for women with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and with the end of the first wave of feminism circa 1930. To ascertain if the editorial strategy and content of the journal shifted to absorb the ramifications of suffrage, the study examined each issue published, comprising some 6,300 articles. This study found that, although the journal adapted by fostering more dynamic narratives of women's new place, it continued themes prevalent over the previous forty years, and depended on narrative framings characteristic of the suffragist movement—motherhood, altruism, equality, profiles of women of accomplishment, pioneers, and success “by chance.” This examination of a women's journal from the 1920s also sheds light on our current environment, and shows how, despite almost a century of citizenship, coverage of women's participation in the public sphere is still presented in ways that mimic coverage from that era.

Women's Empowerment Revisited: From Individual to Collective Power among the Export Sector Workers of Bangladesh

SummaryBangladesh has become known as something of a success in advancing gender equality since the 1990s. There have been rapid gains in a number of social and economic domains, yet by most objective standards the current condition and status of women and girls within Bangladeshi society remain low. Rapid progress has come about under conditions of mass poverty and interlocking forms of social disadvantage, political instability and under‐development, overlain with persistent ‘classic’ forms of patriarchy. Mass employment of women and girls in the country's flagship export sector – the readymade garments (RMG) sector – has been one of the more visible and prominent changes in women's lives since its late 1970s' introduction.Whether and the extent to which RMG or garments employment has changed the lives of women workers for the better has been the subject of much debate, and the research and analysis it has generated offers valuable insights into the processes of economic and social empowerment for poor women in low income developing countries. Yet as this paper notes, close observers of social change in Bangladesh have become dissatisfied with the limits of a focus on individual economic empowerment. Paid work may enable some women to negotiate the ‘structures of constraint’ that shape their lives and relationships, but what of the structures of constraint themselves? In the Bangladesh context the experience of mass RMG employment has given rise to questions about whether women have gained greater recognition as citizens with rights and roles as carers in the private and political actors within the public spheres. Revisiting the question of women's empowerment in this context means interrogating whether paid employment has contributed to investments in the education and skills of women and girls, improvements in their public safety and rights to occupy public space. Given labour militancy in the sector and its partial successes in raising the minimum wage, what has the experience of labour politics meant for women's political empowerment?Drawing mainly on the rich literature available on women's RMG employment, this paper explores the wider and less well‐documented effects of such employment on public policy relating to gender equality in these areas. It concludes that the overall direction of change in the industry points plainly to the need for investments in worker productivity, with a host of implications for women's work and gender equality more broadly. Factory owners have to date shown few signs of recognising their interests in supporting better state health, education and public safety for women and girls, or changing management practices to retain and raise productivity of skilled women workers. Yet with downward pressure on wages increasingly effectively resisted by workers at a time of global economic volatility and rising living costs, the tide may now be turning for the RMG workers of Bangladesh. Productivity gains require the state and the industry to treat women workers as full citizens with public policies that promote their skills and safety and respect, and which guarantee the representation of their rights and demands. RMG employment continues to be a source of empowerment for women in Bangladesh, but social and economic change means that that power now depends less on the individual economic effects of paid work on household decision‐making than it once did. RMG employment is increasingly a source of power for women because of its more collective effects on women's citizenship and political agency. This matters all the more because of how this group is exposed to the volatilities of the global economy.