Womens Citizenship

1
Womens Citizenship

• Kathleen Lynch, Equality Studies Centre, UCD
• Presentation to Banúlacht International Womens
  Day conference, March 8th 2007, Ballymun, Dublin

2
An egalitarian societyEquality From Theory to
Action( Baker, J., Lynch, K., Cantillon, S. and
Walsh, J. 2004

• Economic Equality - in economic relations -earned
  incomes, wages, wealth ownership and
  transmission, and welfare support -goal equality
  of resources
• Socio-cultural Equality -in systems of
  communication, interpretation and representation
  (how women and girls are represented in the
  media, education, the churches) goalequality of
  respect and recognition
• Political Equality -wherever power is enacted -in
  formal politics, on boards, committees, in work
  and family/personal relations goalequality of
  power in public and private institutions
• Affective Equality (emotional context) -wherever
  relations of love, care, and solidarity operate -
  personal relationships, work relations, community
  and associational relations
• goalequality in the doing of care work and
  equality in the receiving of care it integrates
  a concepts dependency and interdependency into
  our understanding of equality and citizenship

3
Contexts of Forms of Inequality
Inequality impact varies across groups
(all interface)

• Economic Context
• Cultural Context
• Political Context
• Affective Context

• Inequality of resources and opportunities This
  is the generative source of inequality for low
  income groups -A social class issue but also a
  gender, disability, ethnic identity issue
• -Inequality of respect or recognition The
  generative source of inequality for Travellers/
  new communities/gay and lesbians/ Black
  people/disabled people/
• -Inequality of power generative source of
  inequality for children in particular but also
  for other groups
• -Inequality of love, care and solidarity
  Generative source of inequality for those
  deprived of love and care e.g. refugee children
  migrant workers deprived of family intimacy/
• Generative source of inequality between women and
  men women are the primary carers

4
Problems with Liberal and Neo-liberal views of
Citizenship

• Liberal perspective
• Citizenship is equated with the public sphere
  citizens are workers in paid employment, people
  who engage in politics, the arts, cultural life
  etc
• The dominant view of citizenship is silent on the
  reality of dependency and interdependency that is
  central to human existence
• Much of the work that women do as citizens is not
  counted in the definition of citizenship care
  and love work is defined as a private natural
  matter. This privatisation of the carer
  citizen and the cared for citizen is deeply
  oppressive of women as it silences their work and
  makes it possible for the market and the State to
  free ride on that work by no-pay and low pay
• Neo-liberal politics offers a market view of
  membership of society
• citizen is defined as a consumer, client with
  the capacity to buy services/products - no rights
  guaranteed by the state
• citizens are defined as autonomous, privatised
  the anxious classes
• focus is on caring for oneself - individual
  responsibility for failure
• states role in public service provision is to
  be seriously circumscribed - ending the
  subvention to the development of civil society
  institutions - via cutting community development
  funding, community education funding

5
A Care-less model of Citizenship is strongly
anti-women

• The Market economy has become the primary
  producer of cultural logic, of cultural value
  the emotional labour in loving and caring and
  showing solidarity is denied
• Deep divisions between the public world, where
  there is silence on care and love, and the
  private and community worlds where
  care-related and development work is an
  over-riding concern
• The masculinised character of the public sphere
  is masked by the disallowing of the language of
  care and love in that domain
• Love, care and solidarity are seen as a necessity
  and a nuisance
• caring is coloured by the context with which it
  is associated- oppressive
• the coloniser within leads us to distance
  ourselves from caring
• Are we being forced to emulate the idealised
  image of the self sufficient rational
  increasingly macho-defined citizen?
• need to deconstruct care work from a feminist
  perspective - enable care discourses to redefine
  public discourse, policies and politics

6
Political challenges for women

• We need to challenge the division between
  strong publics and weak
• sub-altern publics the weak must define the
  strong
• 3 types of public sphere - and where are women
  in these?
• discourse sphere defining the language of
  public debate?
• the policy sphere - defining policies?
• the political sphere defining national and
  international politics?
• Women are often involved in what Nancy Fraser
  calls subaltern counter-politics community
  politics
• Why? - because local community discourses,
  policies and politics has been focused on the
  care ethic but this is inadmissible in the
  strong public sphere of national and
  international politics

7
Challenges

• Exhortations for women to join formal politics
  often ignore the way political life is defined as
  being one that is only open to Care Commanders
  those who can get others to do their care work
• We need to address womens fears of national and
  international politics fear of the media in
  particular
• An ongoing challenge for women is that womens
  issues are not seen to be political issues yet
  care issues and reproductive rights are womens
  issues for all classes and groups
• If women do not engage in formal politics, male
  power will continue to hold sway undisturbed and
  womens citizenship in all spheres will thereby
  remain diminished, Ruth Lister

8
The local and global issues of importance for
women activists

• Making feminist ideology central to egalitarian
  and socialist thinking
• Control of opinion formation (public ideology)
  especially in the media but also in education a
  vital means for setting the political agenda
• Making sure that feminist language becomes
  normalised in public debate
• Moving from community politics to national and
  global politics
• Ensuring feminist women become leaders not just
  women of any viewpoint ongoing problem of
  opportunism

9
What inspires me as an activist

• Seeing social changes happen when we work for
  change
• Belief in the goodness of all people and the
  desire to do good howsoever defined
• A belief in the equality of all peoples
• Deep sense of anger about all forms of social
  injustice
• Good health and security of income from having a
  permanent job!
• Leaders who fight for equality in all walks of
  life
• Solidarity of colleagues in UCD Equality Studies
  Centre, including our students past and present
• The love and appreciation of those closest to me
• NEVER GIVE IN to injustice!

10
Message re local and global connections

• Need to create alliances with women from the
  South and East who are already living in Ireland
• Feminists have the potential to lead a new
  egalitarian vision of Irish society and the
  global order
• We must put the concept of solidarity into
  politics so that a feminist ethic of care become
  central to global thinking rather than a
  capitalist ethic of greed
• We need feminist leaders not women leaders
• We need to create alliance intellectually with
  women in different countries to globalise our
  alternative perspectives