Gender Equality Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship

Citizenship is the common language for expressing aspirations to democratic and egalitarian ideals of inclusion, participation and civic membership. However, there continues to be a significant gap between formal commitments to gender equality and equal citizenship - in the laws and constitutions of many countries, as well as in international human rights documents - and the reality of women's lives. This volume presents a collection of original works that examine this persisting inequality through the lens of citizenship. Distinguished scholars in law, political science and women's studies investigate the many dimensions of women's equal citizenship, including constitutional citizenship, democratic citizenship, social citizenship, sexual and reproductive citizenship and global citizenship. Gender Equality takes stock of the progress toward - and remaining impediments to - securing equal citizenship for women, develops strategies for pursuing that goal and identifies new questions that will shape further inquiries.

Introduction Linda McClain and Joanna L. Grossman; Part I. Constitutional Citizenship and Gender: 1. Gender at the margins of contemporary constitutional citizenship Rogers Smith; 2. Becoming a citizen: marriage, immigration, and assimilation Kerry Abrams; 3. Women's civic inclusion and the bill of rights Gretchen Ritter; 4. Must feminists identify as secular citizens? Lessons from Ontario Beverley Baines; 5. Feminist fundamentalism and constitutional citizenship Mary Anne Case; Part II. Political Citizenship and Gender: 6. Women and antiwar protest: rearticulating gender and citizenship Kathryn Abrams; 7. Stem cells, disability, and abortion: a feminist approach to equal citizenship Nancy Hirschmann; 8. Representation, discrimination, and democracy: a legal assessment of gender quotas in politics Anne Peters and Stefan Suters; 9. Citizenship and women's election to political office: the power of gendered public policies Eileen McDonagh; Part III. Social Citizenship and Gender: 10. Pregnancy and social citizenship Joanna L. Grossman; 11. Equality: still illusive after all these years Martha Albertson Fineman; 12. Razing the citizen: economic inequality, gender, and marriage tax reform Martha T. McCluskey; Part IV. Sexual and Reproductive Citizenship: 13. Sexual citizens: freedom, vibrators, and belonging Brenda Cossman; 14. Feminism, queer theory, and sexual citizenship Maxine Eichner; 15. Infertility, social justice, and equal citizenship Mary Lyndon Shanley; 16. Reproductive rights and the reproduction of gender Barbara Stark; Part V. Global Citizenship and Gender: 17. Women's unequal citizenship at the border Regina Austin; 18. Domestic violence, citizenship and equality Elizabeth Schneider; 19. Reproductive rights and the reproduction of gender Barbara Stark; 20. On the path to equal citizenship and gender equality Anisseh Van Engeland-Nourai; 21. Gender and human rights Deborah Weissman.

This volume examines the persisting inequality between formal commitments to gender equality and equal citizenship - in the laws and constitutions of many countries, as well as in international human rights documents - and the reality of women's lives.

Linda C. McClain is Professor of Law and Paul M. Siskind Research Scholar at Boston University School of Law. She is the author of The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility, which was praised as 'the most careful and comprehensive defense to date of the progressive liberal feminist position on the civic role of families'. She is currently at work on a book on contemporary challenges over regulating civil society titled Free and Equal Association. McClain is a former faculty Fellow of the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions.
Joanna L. Grossman is Professor of Law at Hofstra University, where she served as associate dean for faculty development from 2004 to 2008. She has also taught at Vanderbilt Law School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Law and is a former recipient of a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship. She is an expert in sex discrimination law and has written extensively about workplace equality, with a focus on issues such as sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination. She is a regular columnist for FindLaw's Writ, an online source for legal commentary.