Women’s Movements and Bodily Integrity

Abstract

‘Citizenship is not a word I would use’ was the phrase that best summarised the major findings of the analysis by Line Nyhagen Predelli, Beatrice Halsaa and Cecilie Thun in the project Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe (FEMCIT) of how women’s movement activists viewed the concept of citizenship (Nyhagen Predelli et al., 2012:188). The activists used other framings to formulate their demands, using the language of human rights, equality or social justice. This central finding corresponds with the findings of the FEMCIT project, which focused on bodily citizenship (Outshoorn et al., 2012:135–138). The activists engaged in the campaigns for abortion rights framed the issue in terms of autonomy and self-determination, while those involved in changing prostitution legislation used self-determination alongside competing framings of gender equality, power between the sexes or human rights. Paralleling the gap that Nyhagen Predelli et al. noted between the concept of citizenship in feminist theory and the ‘lived experience’ of activists (2012:208–210), there is a gap between the central notion of bodily integrity underlying the claims of autonomy and self-determination, and the usual understandings of citizenship which do not include women’s claims to bodily integrity.