Citizenship from the feminist perspective in multicultural Malaysia reality or rhetoric?

The discourse and conceptualization of citizenship have been widely accepted and recognized with its universality attributes. However, this ostensibly gender-neutral concept is in fact deeply gendered. Either women are taken to be equal to men, in which case their specific capacities as women are unrecognized and their citizenship is substantively unequal; or else women are taken to be different, with the consequent risk that the rights citizenship allows and the obligations it imposes will again substantively unequal. A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked to the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for citizenship from feminist perspective. The aim of this paper is to discuss the theorization and conceptualization of citizenship from the feminist perspective by invoking examples of case studies and women and minority groups experiences within the context of multicultural and plural society in Malaysia; for then we will be in a better position to understand the practical possibilities for reformulating women and other minority groups citizenship in Malaysia. The paper will be divided into two parts. The first reviews the different theories of citizenship in order to argue for reconceptualisation of citizenship for it to be inclusionary towards women and other minority groups. The second part considers citizenship's exclusionary nature which have served to exclude women and minority groups from full citizenship, both from within and from without the nation state with analysis of case studies and women experiences