Gender, Development, and Citizenship »

Caroline Sweetman is Editor of the international journal Gender and Development.

Focusing on citizenship means thinking about the relationships between individuals and the states in which they live. What difference does having citizenship rights mean for people’s lives? Are structures of governance efficient, and responsive to people’s needs?

This collection of articles examines ways in which citizenship is denied, and argues that citizenship can be used to demand and advance human rights. Women often find themselves excluded from full citizenship by legal systems which leave men to look after the interests of their female dependants. But women need recognition as citizens in their own right, to protect them from exploitation and abuse. People from marginalized communities also often find that the state fails to respond to their needs and interests. Finally, migrants – a growing group of women and men in our global economy – live precariously as aliens in states which do not acknowledge their claims to basic security and services.

Topics here include the tension between cultural sensitivity and universal concepts of rights; reinterpretations of citizenship in communities where the state has failed to guarantee political or economic rights; and projects that are helping to advance active citizenship by increasing people’s voice in decisionmaking.