Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Recasting Citizenship for Women’s Livelihood and Development 7
rulers and women were not excluded from the polity, Brahminical
patriarchy attempted to forge an inflexible caste framework wherein status
was divinely prescribed by birth and lineage. The caste-linked male domination
that evolved in the BC first century involved the establishment of
high ritual status for upper-caste men and the subordination of women
through their seclusion in homes, the concept of pativrata (husband
worship), forbidding widow remarriage and controlling women’s sexuality.
According to the Manusmriti (attributed to the second century AD),
a woman’s dharma lay in serving her husband as god, and she had no
independent existence, or material and religious rights (Chakravarti 1993,
2003). So too in ancient Greece, Aristotle (see Politics Book III, Chapter 5,
translated by Sinclair 1962) defined citizens as a particular class of men,
excluding all those who were constantly engaged in commercial or physical
labour. Resident aliens, women and slaves were excluded, as were children,
seniors and most ordinary workers. Writing in the BC fourth century,
Aristotle argued that all those who may be necessary to the existence of
the state could not be considered citizens equally with grown men, and
that a citizen in the fullest sense was one who shared the privileges of
rule. It is pertinent to note that Aristotle’s concept of citizenship reflects
his understanding of nature and is seen in his categorisation of that which
is ‘by nature superior’, of mind over body, ‘mankind’ over animals and
male over female. Ownership of property (including slaves) and the right
to its produce was the privilege of those considered naturally, biologically,
superior due to the possession of rational faculties.
The concept of citizenship is neither universal nor static. However, for
over 2,000 years of human history since Aristotle, the denial of women’s
rationality as the basis for their exclusion from the ownership of property
and the privileges of rule has characterised many societies in different
parts of the world. For instance, Sundberg (2003: 5) points out that in
the nineteenth century, independent Latin American countries established
liberal, democratic political systems based on restricted representation:
Since the colonial era, Latin American societies have been organised by
biological and cultural hierarchies that position as inferior women,
indigenous people, and people of color with African or Asian ancestry.
Limits on women’s legal rights have been conceptualised in terms of
naturalized accounts of biological differences between men and women,
particularly in terms of mental capacity and roles within the family.