Challenges to Citizenship - the political empowerment of ethnic minority women

The voices of ethnic minority women have on the whole been absent from the public Danish debate. What kind of values and visions do political active women have about equality on the private and public arena? Waht are their ideas about equality and recognition? What kind of discourses and strategies for political empowerment do minority organisations have? These are some of the main questions in this investigation of citizenship and power based on qualitative interviews with women active in voluntary organisations. On the basis of the narratives, the book analyses the potential and barriers for political empowerment of ethnic minority women and the tension between ethnic identity, political biography and the development of gender political identities. The book tells about the life of minority women and the tension between the individual woman and cultural identity, between family norms and visibility in public life, between equality and equal worth. On this basis the book discusses the democratic dilemma between equality and recognition of cultural difference and between multiculturalism and gender equality