ABSTRACT
This chapter explores equality of status that Margaret Thornton identifies as the hallmark of liberal citizenship and suggests that this understanding of citizenship has costs as well as benefits. In the conflicts between the universal and particular characteristic of late modernity authors find the genesis of the unencumbered citizen, the rights bearing subject. The unencumbered citizen is able to access the 'infrastructure' required to participate fully and as an equal in the public sphere. The chapter argues that the barriers to equal participation by women are more like those depending upon cultural and religious particularity than like those depending upon racial difference as a matter of biological fact. The battle between those who believe that gender roles are biologically determined and those who believe that they are socially constructed remains live in liberal nation states.
