Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives

The competing pressures of globalization and immigration have forced people everywhere to think long and hard about what it means to be a citizen. In Citizenship, Ruth Lister argues for a new feminist notion of citizenship, one that can accommodate difference. Lister argues that citizenship has traditionally been a tool of social and political exclusion, inequality, and xenophobia. How, then, she asks, can it offer a solid foundation for progressive, non-discriminatory policymaking? Lister explores a range of disciplines and a burgeoning international literature on citizenship, pinpointing important theoretical issues and recasting traditional thinking about it, while exploring its political and policy implications for women in all their diversity. Themes of inclusion and exclusion (at the national and international level), rights and participation, inequality and difference are thus brought to the fore in the development of a "woman-friendly" theory of citizenship. Wide-ranging, stimulating, and accessible, this pathbreaking book will be of particular interest and relevance to students, activists, and policymakers.