Reconceiving citizenship

Abstract

The resurgence of interest in the meaning of citizenship has encouraged debate on its gendered character, especially the relationship between public and private. Informed by such analyses, this article considers the political organizations, in this case in Australia, formed to reclaim maternity care from medical dominance and to promote women's choices as childbearers. As activists, mothers have carved out a new form of politics, transforming their ‘private’ experiences into issues of public contention. Challenging established categories, they have sought to improve their social rights through educating the public and changing professional and institutional practices – for example, asserting their ‘right’ to birth at home and breastfeed in public places. I argue that neither this project, nor that of feminism's emphasis on achieving equality in the public sphere, has been adequate, for gender equity requires intermeshed social, economic and political rights. By conceptualizing mothers as a political collectivity with distinctive, though not homogeneous, interests and needs, the article indicates ways to extend current theoretical frameworks, including postmodernist feminist debates on gender-justice and the politics of differentiated citizenship.