Citizenship and Gender Equality Dr Hakan Seckinelgin ICPS -Strategic Gender Equity Planning 14 September 2016

How do we think about citizenship? How does this relate to Gender? Formal Citizenship vs Informal Implementations Electoral approach to Gender. Does this help facilitate development of citizenship?

Citizenship I T.H. Marshall (1950) : citizenship in three parts- - Civil rights Political rights Right to socio-economic security So Citizenship as a principle of social membership But also institutions – courts, parliament, local government, education systems and social services to give expression to these rights in everyday lives.

Citizenship II Marshall - Citizenship as socio-political protection (against?) As a way of managing social (and political) conflict Creating solidarity within a society for grounds for equality of opportunity – and social mobility (education here is very important). Education system - ‘Right to display and develop differences’

Citizenship III Marshall is fine but: Historically - Development of social rights as a conflict management in work place in relation to employment, sickness, retirement. Also different places had different routes: UK class inequality in relation to housing, education and social security US migration, race, access and social mobility.

Citizenship IV A uniform concept? Difference between active and passive citizenship (recipient than claimant?) Citizenship in non-heterogeneous societies – content of the rights? Also a major problem on women!

Citizenship V Marshallian citizenship and gender : Women’s rights are subsumed under their belonging to a household –head of household model dominates. Political economy of heterosexual /patriarchal social reproduction. Reproducing the next generation + marriage and belonging to a household creates the access to full citizenship entitlements.

Citizenship VI State promotes family based reproduction – With important implications for women. This also grounds ideas around national citizenship based on ‘imagined’ national identities. Women are crucial in these imaginations for family formation, to reproduce the nation, the culture … Women reproduce the nation – men win the country = a particular division of labour

Citizenship VII Move from static assigned citizenship to think about more active citizenship! Considering citizenship as a process: both as an inclusionary process through creating entitlements and exclusionary process of building a common identity (gender, race, ethnicity, religion, region or ….)for distribution at the same time. As a process possibility of change – power to change existing arrangements

Brazil: at independence in 1822 and the abolition of slavery in 1888 – created a direct and voluntary suffrage by limiting it to literate in 1881. The suffrage was restricted as a result to about 1% of the population. Then 1891 constitution absolutized right to primary education. This was repealed in 1985.

Implementation of formally recognized rights of women as citizens are challenged in the courts by the enforcement problems – divorce, rape, domestic violence in some cases employment rights.

1924 equality of access to education 1926 full divorce and inheritance rights 1930 right to be elected in local elections (+maternity leave) 1934 recognized full electoral rights to women 1935 17 women elected to the national parliament 1936 new labour law regulated women’s employment 2011 right to use your own surname after marriage

Election I Electoral participation as a form of representation. Democratic representation and attitude change. The relationship between the principle of equal representation and social gender equality outcomes.

Election II Introduction of electoral quotas – in the last 10-15 years over 100 countries int. Many during political transitions and post-conflict countries - OECD assessment of bilateral aid in fragile states found that only 20% of allocations for peace and security is targeting gender equality. Most of the literature concerns the effectiveness of the mechanisms used to increase women’s political participation

Election IV experimentations with voluntary quotas for women candidates on party lists in Scandinavian countries in early 1970’s. But it is argued that at present gender equality measures that are targeting women’s political participation are mostly applied in less democratic contexts. Challenges of descriptive representation (women’s presence in politics) and women’s substantive representation (the promotion of women’s interest)

Election V ‘context in which women’s representation emerges as an international conditionality to build a new system. Such developments seem to ignore the context and history within which gender debate takes place’ (Kandiyoti). effectiveness of elected women ‘will depend upon a combination of their own skills, the pressure of women in civil society, and the capacity, responsiveness, and accountability of the governance systems’ (Goetz)

Electoral VI But : ‘unprecedented historical leaps in women’s representation had not been accompanied by simultaneous changes in women’s socio-economic positions’ (Dahlerup) Women had already achieved some 20-30 percent representation in the parliaments of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden before quotas were introduced in the 1970s and Iceland in the 1980s.

Does this matter? As voluntary measures (another significant difference in the ‘model’), they were only used by some political parties in the centre and at the left. An incremental process, it took 60 years for women to cross the 20 percent threshold in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and 70 years to reach 30 percent.

Some conclusions: Inequalities that underwrite gender imbalances will not be addressed unless they are targeted directly. Also the citizenship entitlements are located within broader gendered ideological grounds that are also underwrite inequalities. ‘in all of human society, there are positions that enable their bearers to exercise power’ (Dahrendorf 1968, p. 134). ……..