ABSTRACT
Western liberal thought has constructed a notion of rights based on an ideal type of citizen. This citizen is abstract, universal, non-gendered, and nonracial; a citizen who is entitled to what we may refer to as 'natural rights' (Benn, 1972). From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onwards, it has been commonly held that it is the task of the state and of the law to safeguard these rights, lists of which were drawn up in such documents as the American Bill of Rights and the Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen). However, political practice was such that the exercise of full citizenship continued to be confined to particular groups, for example, the fully literate, the sane, or the propertied, elite minority. Despite significant advances, both in political philosophy and democratic practice, especially since the development of the modern welfare state, the concept and practice of citizenship continues to be restricted. As second-wave feminism clearly exposed, women have been given only limited access to full citizens' rights, even in the modern welfare state. This led to activism on the part of liberal, or 'rights' feminists, aimed at ensuring that the rights traditionally ascribed to men were also made available to women and that barriers to 4women's participation as full citizens of the state were dismantled. Rights, it was argued, should be made available to the abstract, universal, non-gendered subject, that is gender should not be a valid basis upon which to exclude access to rights.
