A Feminist Exploration of European Citizenship : Gender, the Individual and the Common Good

This project is a feminist exploration of the way in which European citizenship is currently conceptually conceived. It examines the liberal and republican currents in European citizenship studies and brings to bear upon them the powerful legacy of feminist critique on citizenship within the nation-state. This project highlights the androcentric assumptions that are being incorporated into liberal and republican inspired prescriptions for European transnational citizenship. These theoretical conceptions risk institutionalising gender inequalities into our conceptual understanding of Citizenship in the European Union (EU). Using the work of 'gender-pluralist' authors and applying this perspective to the European context, this book provides a theoretical framework that can move the discursive terrain of EU citizenship studies away from questions of political legitimacy to egalitarian politics. This alternative discursive context allows for the construction of a feminist theory of citizenship, in which difference and diversity form the cornerstone of a substantive, inclusive and 'women-friendly' European polity.