Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Recasting Citizenship for Women’s Livelihood and Development 15
the loss of livelihood, which would be tantamount to denial of the right
to life, as the right to life and the right to work were interdependent. Yet,
despite constitutional and legal provisions, in practice citizenship is embedded
in webs of power, prestige and authority that create differential
rights on axes of class, caste, ethnicity, gender and age. This was unfortunately
reflected in another case (Almitra Patel vs. Union of India) in
2000 where the judgement criminalised the poor by holding that if the
state facilitated the relocation of slum-dwellers, it would amount to
rewarding pickpockets (Ramanathan 2004).
Issues of citizenship entered the development debate only in the mid-
1990s and gained ground swiftly by extending the concept of human rights
to those who lack entitlements and the means of livelihood. Among the
many illuminating reformulations of citizenship are those by Dobson
(2003) who envisages a cosmopolitan ‘ecological citizenship’, Kabeer (2005)
who speaks of an inclusive ‘global citizenship’ that encompasses justice,
recognition, self-determination and solidarity, and Roy (2001, 2005) who
seeks to foreground a ‘gendered citizenship’ that does not exclude Dalits,
workers, peasants, women and even the environment.
Earlier, feminists had attempted to re-conceptualise citizenship to
include ‘difference’. Lister (1997) reconciled universalism and difference
in a ‘differentiated universalism’ and Werbner and Yuval-Davis (1999)
advanced the concept of a ‘multi-tiered citizenship’. Others have included
an ethics of care (see Hirschmann 1996; Hirschmann and Stephano 1996;
Sevenhuijsen 1998, 2000), and of community organising work and community
service (Young 1997). Exploring the linkages between democracy
and citizenship in Australia, Curtin (2000: 241) points out that while
women ‘have belonged as citizens of the Australian nation-state since
they gained the right to vote in 1902’, they have themselves sought to
extend the conception of citizenship beyond the formal right to vote.
Initially, they claimed their rights as ‘citizen-mothers’, arguing for a
recognition of their ‘difference’ from men. When they realised that such
a conception excluded some interests, particularly those of Australian
Aboriginal women, the strategy shifted to ‘seeking equality as workers’.
Moving on, women now claim equal representation in political
institutions. As Curtin says, ‘the way in which demands for the reconceptualisation
of citizenship are framed, very much depends on the
historical context’.