Gender and citizenship models: Reflections from feminist literature

Abstract

Prominent literature on citizenship is both gender-neutral and gender-sensitive. Yet, as many feminist scholars have argued, the concept of citizenship itself has been historically framed as quintessentially male, thus excluding women from the equal status of citizenship. Therefore, in order for women to be fully recognized as citizens, feminist scholarship considers the rearticulation of the concept of citizenship as well as its related concepts of public and private. Along these lines, women’s citizenship as a status and practice allows space for women’s agency to be exerted in the civil society sphere as well as within the governmental domain of politics. The most important factor of women’s political citizenship, women’s self-identification as political actors, is crucial in order for them to exercise their political citizenship rights. This paper offers a theoretical insight into the concept of citizenship, citizenship theories and women’s citizenship as political agency. Moreover, the paper presents three models of citizenship that have emerged from the feminists’ attempts to re-gender the concept of citizenship aiming the deconstruction of power relations and attacking the concept of citizenship as being quintessentially male.