ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the modern nation-state by focusing on women's political activism to attain equal citizenship. To gain a thorough understanding of women's long struggle for inclusion, it compares mobilizations in the United States, India, China, postsocialist states in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the European Union. The chapter considers competing conceptions of the state advanced by modern political theorists. It compares absolutist, constitutional, social democratic, pluralist, and new-institutionalist accounts of the state. The chapter examines women's complex responses to political exclusion. Combining historical research with contemporary investigation, it examines various forms of women's political engagements, comparing grassroots activism, social movement mobilizations, litigation, encuentros, and "NGOization". The chapter explores tactics devised by women to engage the state, as well as principled arguments for nonengagement. It considers diverse modes of political action women deployed during the century of struggle to attain citizenship within democratizing nations and examines strategies created to address a range of issues in the twenty-first century.
