What are feminist fussing about? : Feminists attempts for full Citizenship

Is citizenship gendered? The answer to this question for most feminist theorists has to be a resounding ‘yes’. For them citizenship has always been gendered in the sense that women and men have stood in different relationship to it, to the disadvantage of women. In recent years citizenship has been combined to gender by a number of feminists. Their work is all about the importance to reconstruct citizenship because they believe it fails to engage or to include women. This thesis examines the limitations of citizenship as it is in its current construction. The discussion clearly indicates the need to use gender and difference as categories of analysis in the creation of an inclusive conception of citizenship. The thesis will focus on the theoretical project and particularly on three debates around the ‘engendering of citizenship’. Discourse analysis is used as textual analysis in order to compare these three alternative models to citizenship. The aim is to investigate what solutions they find to include women into public life. One can appreciate that citizenship is a complex problem and so are the debates concerning it. It is important that feminists discuss this question carefully so that citizenship does not loose its meaning