Comparative Perspectives on Gender and Citizenship: Latin America and the Former Socialist States

Abstract

Political debate over the past two decades has involved a questioning of hitherto established models of political order, a rethinking not only of now discredited models of state socialism but also of certain aspects of liberal democracy. A number of themes present in classical political theory – civil society, rights and citizenship – have become the focus of this attempt to reconceptualize a legitimate order. Thus, in a variety of contexts, the idea of citizenship has come to occupy a central place in post-Cold War political and policy debates. Yet as these debates have become progressively internationalized, it is important to keep in mind that the meaning of citizenship is both variable and to a certain extent context-specific.² While a general endorsement of the idea of citizenship has accompanied the spread of more democratic state forms across the world, and has been developed in uneasy relation to these other goals, quite what citizenship implies in these varied contexts is all too rarely considered. The classical ideals of equality, the rule of law and participation in political life are all open to interpretation and have been claimed to exist in markedly different legal and political systems in an epoch when political goals have themselves seen considerable diversification. This question of the variability of the meaning of citizenship is illustrated in what follows, through a discussion of the ways in which issues of gender and feminist politics interact with the changing regional meanings given to citizenship in Latin America and the former socialist states.³