special guest contribution: violence against women as a barrier to the realisation of human rights and the effective exercise of citizenship

This article focuses on violence against women as a barrier to the realisation of women’s civil, political, economic, social, cultural and developmental rights, as well as the consequences of this for the effective exercise of citizenship. The value of adopting a citizenship lens, identifying the nexus between violence against women and human rights, and adopting an approach that acknowledges the multiplicity, intersectionality and continuity of violence across the public and private spheres serves to assist in identifying and providing an analysis of the continuing challenges in the quest to eliminate violence against women. Owing to the scarcity of literature that explicitly highlights the link between human rights, citizenship and violence against women, the current analysis highlights some of the existing literature on a situated understanding of citizenship through a women’s human rights lens, while the discussion on violence against women as a barrier to realising all human rights that enable the exercise of effective citizenship is largely underpinned by the work of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences.     

Negotiating Citizenship: The case of foreign domestic workers in Canada

This paper argues that most conceptualizations of citizenship limit the purview of the discourse to static categories. ‘Citizenship’ is commonly seen as an ideal type, presuming a largely legal relationship between an inidividual and a single nationstate - more precisely only one type of nation-state, the advanced capitalist postwar model. Alternatively, we suggest a re-conceptualization of citizenship as a negotiated relationship, one which is subject therefore to change, and acted upon collectively within social, political and economic relations of conflict. This dynamic process of negotiation takes place within a context which is shaped by gendered, racial and class structures and ideologies; it also involves international hierarchies among states. Citizenship is therefore negotiated on global as well as national levels. This conceptualization is demonstrated by way of identifying one particular set of experiences of negotiated citizenship, involving foreign domestic workers in Canada. As non-citizens originating from Third World conditions, this is a case involving women of colour workers, highly prone to abusive conditions, and under the direction of employers who are more affluent First World citizens and predominantly white women. Original survey data based on interviews with Caribbean and Filipino domestic workers in Canada are used to demonstrate the varied, creative and effective strategies of two distinctive groups of non-citizens as they attempt to negotiate citizenship rights in restrictive national and international conditions.     

Public and Private Citizenship: From Gender Invisibility to Feminist Inclusiveness

Conceptions of citizenship which rest on an abstract and universal notion of the individual founder on their inability to recognize the political relevance of gender. Such conceptions, because their ‘gender-neutrality’ has the effect of excluding women, are not helpful to the project of promoting the full citizenship of women.The question of citizenship is often reduced to either political citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of political participation, or social citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of economic (in)dependence. The paper argues for the recognition of citizenship as gendered, and as an ethical, that is non-instrumental, social status which is distinct from both political participation and economic (in)dependence. What unites us as citizens, in our equal membership of the political community, need not rely on a conception of us as ‘neutral’ (abstract, universalized, genderless) individuals undertaking one specific activity located in the public realm, but can take account of the diverse ways in which we engage in ethically-grounded activities on the basis of our different genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and other differences, in both the public and private realms.A convincing feminist conception of citizenship necessarily involves a radical redefinition of the public/private distinction to accommodate the recognition of citizenship practices in the private realm. The paper builds on the observation that the concept of ‘citizenship’ is broader than the concept of ‘the political’ (or ‘the social/economic’), and contends that feminism provides us with the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity, which applies to both men and women. The recognition of gendered subjectivity opens the way to the recognition of the diversity of citizenship practices.It is not that women need to be liberated from the private realm, in order to take part in the public realm as equal citizens, but that women – and men – already undertake responsibilities of citizenship in both the public and the private realms.     

‘Everyone needs a holiday from work,why not mothers?’ Motherhood,Feminism and Citizenship at the Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974–1977

The Royal Commission on Human Relationships was an initiative of the Whitlam government, instigated in 1974 to investigate ‘the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships’, with particular attention to the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’. The Commission heard evidence from thousands of Australians on a broad range of topics, and given the Royal Commission's origins in the 1973 Federal Parliamentary debate over abortion, it is perhaps unsurprising that motherhood featured so prominently in submissions presented to the Commission. In this article it is argued that mothers’ submissions to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships reveal the ways that social and cultural meanings of motherhood were being contested in 1970s Australia. Rather than making claims for rights in the established language of maternal citizenship, many women deployed their private experiences of mothering to argue that the state should facilitate their access to both paid employment and time away from mothering. These mothers argued for equal citizenship rights, challenging the reproductive compact that had long been central to maternal citizenship. The submissions reveal the ways that mothers (and their critics) drew upon both new and old meanings of motherhood to articulate new cultural and political possibilities for motherhood and citizenship in 1970s Australia.     

Fighting for the ‘Privileges of Citizenship’: the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), feminism and the women's movement, 1928–1945

In 1928 the YWCA welcomed the introduction of the universal suffrage by declaring that women in Britain were now entitled to the full political privileges of citizenship. This article will explore the way in which the YWCA, previously omitted from histories of the British women's movement, sought to educate and inform its members about the rights and duties of democratic citizenship. The involvement of the YWCA in citizenship education and its role in campaigning for the citizenship rights of women will be assessed, with a particular focus on workers’ rights and the appointment of women police. Despite its reluctance to be identified as overtly feminist, the YWCA was determined to ensure that women had access to social and economic rights within a democratic society. The article therefore argues that a new definition of the women's movement is required in order to uncover the full extent of female engagement in politics and public debate in the aftermath of the suffrage.     

ambiguities and ambivalences in making the nation: women and politics in 20th-century Mexico

By comparing two time periods, the early and late 20th century, this article examines the ambiguities and ambivalences in the state promotion of women in the nation-building projects of Mexico. I argue that in both cases, the state was keen to promote itself as modern and progressive and used women's status in society to these ends. Despite the explicit focus on women, there were many ambiguities and ambivalences resulting from the competing state projects in the political, socio-economic and cultural arenas offering women both privileged spaces and constraints in the development of gendered citizenship. The contradictions arise from simultaneously promoting women's rights, extolling traditional gender roles and fearing women's political activism – both conservative and more radical. Although these ambivalences and ambiguities remain a constant feature, there is a key difference in the two time periods: in one the regime is inward looking, economically protectionist and corporatist, while in the other a new vision of Mexico has attempted to dismantle the corporatist structures and state development project with private economic initiatives and political individualism. In both periods, women gained important rights but romanticized imagery of the self-sacrificing mother was mobilized to underpin change: women were expected both to change and remain the same.     

Citizens not feminists: the boundary negotiated between citizenship and feminism by mainstream women's organisations in England, 1928-39

Abstract

This article explores the concepts of citizenship and feminism as interpreted by six large voluntary and mainstream women's groups in England during the years 1928–39. The six organisations considered here are the Mothers' Union, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Catholic Women's League, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds and the National Council of Women. The article asks why these organisations, which declared they were not feminist were committed to highlighting, and fighting for, the rights of newly enfranchised women citizens. It is concluded that for these organisations the concept of citizenship for women, as opposed to feminism, was a more effective way to secure social and economic rights for the majority of women during the inter-war period.     

Women's Citizenship and the First World War: general remarks and a case study of women's enfranchisement in Austria and Germany

Historians' views about the impact of World War I on women's citizenship have diverged. Some scholars have emphasized that the war changed cultural understandings of suffrage due to women's patriotism and dedication to the war effort. Others have underlined that the politics of electoral reform determined whether or not women attained voting rights. Based on the cases of Austria and Germany where women were enfranchised in the context of revolutionary unrest triggered by the war, this article argues that the political process was in fact crucial. However, the claim of women's suffrage during the war is to be contextualized within a general understanding of republican citizenship and the concept of the ‘citizen soldier’. This discourse was essential to keeping the issue alive during the war. Nonetheless, further studies are still required to assess the war's impact on women and citizenship in the subjective sense of participation.     

International Feminism and Empire‐Building between the Wars: the case of Viola Smith

This article examines US Trade Commissioner Viola Smith’s role in the furtherance of the American empire between World Wars I and II. As a Foreign Service Officer in Shanghai, China on behalf of the Department of Commerce and through her activism as an international feminist in the Pacific region, Smith perpetuated the imperialist project. As Trade Commissioner, she implemented trade policy in lucrative China that helped to economically enrich the USA. Likewise, as an international feminist, Smith injected Western superiority to the international feminist sphere through her work for peace and women’s rights in the Pacific.     

The Limits of European-ness: Immigrant women in Fortress Europe

This article is intended to contribute to the ongoing debate on the ideological, social and political formation of a New Europe. By focusing on the position of immigrant women it examines the gendered nature of the changing configurations of cultural and social European landscapes. Two features of immigrant women's positioning are the key issues of this analysis: regulations through national and European law and ideological representation. It is argued that the debate on European citizenship should be closely linked to the question of formal and substantive and also of symbolic rights. Moreover, feminists, when using the concept of difference in this context, should be aware of the power structures underlying differentiated social positions in society. European-ness will lose its exclusive character only if it provides a solid place in the symbolic order of Europe for immigrants.     

when debility provides a future: preventing vertical transmission of HIV

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government has enacted a series of cuts to public spending, under the auspices of austerity. Underpinning these cuts is a neo-liberal model of citizenship, in which citizens are expected to be autonomous, independent and economically productive, and in which the responsibilities of citizenship outweigh the rights. This model of citizenship is characterised by a paradoxical approach to social reproduction. The Coalition government has taken a significant interest in social reproduction as a means of creating the next generation of ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens; yet, the current austerity measures involve the withdrawal of state support for social reproduction activities. Drawing on participant observation carried out with migrant women’s groups in Sheffield and Manchester, as well as interviews with group members, this article demonstrates how the government’s paradoxical approach to social reproduction, combined with gendered and racialised discourses of citizenship and ‘Britishness’, have led to policies that place ethnic minority migrant women in an untenable situation. The social reproduction activities of ethnic minority migrant women are the subject of intense government interest, because of the concern that they will be unable to produce ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens. In some cases, this has led to government policies clearly intended to dissuade ‘undesirable’ migrants from having children. In other cases, migrant women are expected to show their commitment to integration, both for themselves and their children, specifically by learning English, even as the government has drastically cut funding for English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) classes. While seemingly paradoxical, this is in keeping with a racialised neo-liberal model of citizenship under which the ‘responsible’ migrant mother should be able to parent and learn English without government assistance. Nonetheless, these policies are actually self-defeating, as they prevent migrant women from exhibiting the very characteristics of neo-liberal citizenship that they are ostensibly trying to encourage.     

UNICEF, syphilis and the state: negotiating female citizenship in the post-Second World War world

Few charitable organizations have achieved the status of global recognition enjoyed by UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, which embodies the international effort to provide for needy children the world over. Created because of its synchronicity with the United Nations' stated purpose—to maintain peace in the world—UNICEF launched its operations in 1946. Its founding, early operations and eventual restructuring reveal a great deal about concurrent political and economic events, but also provide keen insight into international ideas about who qualified for full citizenship in the post-war world. The consequences of UNICEF's policies, procedures and practices posed challenges to notions of citizenship for both women and children. It challenged citizenship not by questioning sex-specific gender roles, but by judiciously adhering to the United Nations' promise to create equality for men and women alike. UNICEF found itself in the unique position to be able to globalize definitions of what constituted full citizenship in any nation, due to its rapid expansion throughout the world. Through its programs, especially those related to health care, it not only challenged these roles in the West, but began over several decades to complicate the definition of citizenship as it became a forceful presence in Asia and Africa throughout the 1970s.     

Advocating for the Right: Alliance Defending Freedom and the Rhetoric of Christian Persecution

In this article I trace the legal and cultural advocacy work of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the single largest Christian conservative legal organisation operating in the US today. I begin by locating ADF strategy within the longer history of Christian persecution rhetoric articulated by the Moral Majority during the 1970s and 1980s. I then analyse both legal and cultural outputs of the organisation in two key cases: the so-called bathroom bills limiting transgender access to public facilities in several states, and the service denial of florist Barronelle Stutzman. I argue that by emphasising the perceived vulnerability of white cisgender women and girls in these cases, ADF litigators and cultural producers advance a narrow conception of religious freedom rights located in the specific cultural politics of neoliberal, white evangelicalism. As a result, while these cases have been legislative and policy failures for ADF they nevertheless provide useful insight into the rhetorical project of Christian persecution.

     

The Conflicting Interests of Women's Organizations and the League of Nations on the Question of Married Women's Nationality in the 1930s

This article investigates the question of legal equality in citizenship and nationality in the inter-war years. The first conference for the codification of international law was hosted by the League of Nations in The Hague in 1930. One of the topics of the conference was married women's nationality, and international women's organizations did everything in their power to persuade the conference that married women deserved to be treated equally to non-married women and to men. Women lobbied the League, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. The study highlights the conflicting aims of a movement struggling for social and political change and the official aims of an international organization. Whereas previous research has focused on the actions of the women's organizations, this article directs its interest towards the interaction between the League of Nations and the women's organizations. In questions regarding women's rights and claims for equality the League of Nations adapted an overly cautious, even conservative, position. However, the article shows that the international discourse provided arguments and documents useful in national struggles. This will be illustrated by the debate on independent nationality in the Swedish feminist press.     

Gendered Citizenship in a Multidimensional Perspective: The Challenges Facing Norway within the Nordic Model

This article discusses the challenges that continue to exist in the struggle for full and equal citizenship in Norway, focusing particularly on the multidimensional citizenship that has been central to the overarching project of women's movements. It reports on comparative research on the social, economic, multicultural, and intimate dimensions of citizenship which offers grounds to regard Norway as an example of good practice and supportive policies in relation to gendered citizenship, and at the same time highlights that fully equal and just citizenship remains to be achieved, particularly for minoritized women.     

Constructing women's citizenship in the interwar period: the Edinburgh women citizens’ association

As a new stage in women's political participation, enfranchisement brought new efforts to advance gender equality and women's social position and new organisations were formed of women voters, including the women citizens' associations. Concerns with women's and children's welfare and social reform that had been important to sections of the pre-war women's movement were repositioned alongside the pursuit of an equal franchise, equal pay and opportunities and women's representation, in relation to women's new political status. Study of the women citizens' associations in Scotland supports an account of the period 1918-30 as one of considerable political activity, particularly in developing women's role and influence in relation to established political institutions and civil society. It suggests that the division between ‘old’ and ‘new’ feminisms after 1918, mapped onto the binary of equality and difference, was not necessarily a tension for women's organisations. It gives insight into the meaning of ‘citizenship’ for women activists and how the status, rights and responsibilities of citizenship articulated and shaped a distinctive women's politics, bridging political, civil and social rights.     

Citizens of their World: Australian Feminism and Indigenous Rights in the International Context, 1920s and 1930s

Inter-war Australia saw the emergence of a feminist campaign for indigenous rights. Led by women activists who were members of various key Australian women's organizations affiliated with the British Commonwealth League, this campaign proposed a revitalized White Australia as a progressive force towards improving ‘world’ race relations. Drawing upon League of Nations conventions and the increasing role for the Dominions within the British Commonwealth, these women claimed to speak on behalf of Australian Aborigines in asserting their right to reparation as a usurped people and the need to overhaul government policy. Opposing inter-war policies of biological assimilation, they argued for a humane national Aboriginal policy including citizenship and rights in the person. Where white men had failed in their duty towards indigenous peoples, world women might bring about a new era of civilized relations between the races.     

Gender and International Relations: A Global Perspective and Issues for the Caribbean

In this paper we discuss the relatively recent integration of feminist thinking in the discipline of International Relations. We argue that the theoretical foundations of International Relations are still primarily based on traditional male-female dichotomies, particularly that of separate public and private spheres. By extension, women are largely excluded from state power and decision making. The state is itself gendered. The growing recognition of the links between the global economy and gender forces us to engage with International Relations in foreign and international policy. In this article we look at feminist interpretations of three main International Relations areas: international security, human rights, and international political economy and their implications for gender policies in the Caribbean. We also look at the contributions of Caribbean women to the international feminist agenda and suggest a research agenda for ongoing feminist theorizing in the discipline of International Relations.     

The All-Asian Women's Conference 1931: Indian women and their leadership of a pan-Asian feminist organisation

In January 1931, the All-Asian Women's Conference (AAWC) convened in Lahore. Forty-five female delegates met to discuss common social and political concerns of women in Asia, such as infant mortality, suffrage, education and rights of inheritance. Organised by Indian women, along with the Irish Theosophist Margaret Cousins, the AAWC spoke to visions of pan-Asianism that were reflected by male Indian nationalists at the time. Keen to counteract the Euro-American centrism of international women's organisations, Asian women discussed the ways they could organise together. This article analyses the rhetoric within the conference, through its reports, correspondence and international newspapers and periodicals. It discusses the ways pan-Asianism was conceived by Indian women in the 1930s and explains why there was only ever one meeting of the AAWC.     

目标达成模式下的最低工资标准评价指标体系构建及实证研究

最低工资制度是国际上普遍采用的旨在保障低收入劳动者群体的一种社会保护制度,最低工资标准的合理与否会直接影响劳动力市场的正常运行。运用目标达成评价模式,把我国最低工资的制度目标分解为保障目标、发展目标和预防就业负效应目标,分别构建一级评价指标体系。运用2015年相关数据对我国31省(市、区)的最低工资标准进行了实证分析,结果显示,我国31个省(市、区)中,绝大多数省份的最低工资标准能够充分保障劳动力及其抚养人口的最低生活,距离保障基本生活的目标存在较小的差距;分享经济社会发展成果较明显;我国整体最低工资标准处于国际标准的低水平层次,基本不会导致就业负效应发生。