Revisiting the Equality/Difference Debate: Redefining Citizenship for the New Millennium
Title:
Revisiting the Equality/Difference Debate: Redefining Citizenship for the New Millennium
Author:
Longo, Patrizia
Appeared in:
Citizenship studies
Paging:
Volume 5 (2001) nr. 3 pages 269-284
Year:
2001-11-01
Contents:
The argument for parity ignores the fact that 'politics' and 'citizenship' are not neutral terms, and thus to include women without redefining and challenge those terms might not produce any change to the masculine norms that support the system. In fact, politics can be reshaped to fit women rather than the other way around. The best antidote to a masculinist culture seems to be the stripping of political authority of its masculinist connotations in the name of a womanfriendly polity. Women's movements must therefore propose a new definition of citizenship—as evidenced by the mobilization of several groups of women at the margins of the traditional political universe. In other words, we need to present a new image of citizenship that both includes political, economic, and social aspects, which responds to the needs and demands of women, and which takes into account gender, class, and ethnic differences in a pluralistic framework. A better approach implies calling into question the reductive common definition of several concepts such as politics, universalism, equality, and difference. At a time of growing disenchantment with conventional politics in many countries, there is the need to overcome traditional modes of political organization both within and beyond the nation-state. Women, working within the spaces where public and private worlds collide, operating at the interstices of the public and the private, are providing new role models for active political citizenship.
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