ABSTRACT
Women and effective citizenship In Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives, Ruth Lister has developed the inclusive/ exclusive approach to the restrictions that some groups face in achieving full and effective citizenship. She argues that, for any group to achieve effective citizenship, it must have the ‘rights necessary to be able to participate as a social and political agent’. Historically, women have been excluded from formal citizenship. It was men who were active in the public arena. However, men were only able to be active in the public arena because women were active in the private, domestic arena. To adapt the old adage, ‘behind every good man stands a good or even better woman’. A historical justification for this division was the gendering of the human emotions with impartiality, rationality and independence being regarded as male qualities, whilst caring and domesticity were regarded as female qualities.
