RACHEL WILSON

FEMINIST CITIZENSHIP: A REFUSAL OF SILENCE

Feminist citizenship combines the goals of gender equality and the rights and obligations of citizenship to create a model for members of a collective society to follow in order to engage in creating political, economic, and social change. In order to instigate both quantitative and qualitative change, feminist citizens must refuse silence in their discursive, performative, organizational, and everyday interactions with the democratic system. These interactions are most crucial for women who act as feminist citizens while refusing to silence their political opinions. The success of any form of feminist citizenship depends on the adoption of an attitude of non-silence against inequalities between women and men.

Feminism contains within itself a broad spectrum of ideologies. The collection of specialized factions within the political movement share the same overarching goal—to achieve the political, social, and economic equality of women to men—but specify how to do so in a myriad of ways. These strategies for equality compose a range that mirrors the spectrum of ideologies that create the mosaic of feminism. However, without a political or social theatre in which to perform, feminism is limited and restricted to paper and ideology. It is within a society composed of citizens of a collective where any form of political opinion, including feminism, actually carries crucial meaning and importance. As explained by Ruth Lister, citizenship is “an essentially contested concept” with a “slippery” nature. A combination of “rights and obligations that flow from… membership”[1], citizenship must balance the exchanges of these two components in order to benefit both the individual and the collective. Political opinion affects this balance and how the exchanges of rights and obligations are performed. A collective society both grants each citizen with the right to possess a political opinion and demands from each citizen the obligation to act on his or her political opinion. As such, feminist citizenship grants the right to opinions on the best way to achieve equality and requires the obligation to speak up about these opinions.

No matter an individual feminist’s inclination toward one type of feminism or another, as a feminist citizen, he or she is given the right to such opinions and is obligated to refuse silence on matters of equality between women and men. Above all else, feminist citizenship cannot be silent. A refusal of silence—non-silence—no matter the details of an individual feminist citizen’s strategies for equality, is crucial on the road to actual equality. This is not simply equality on paper or in ideology, but a true equality that crosscuts the public and private spheres and that exists politically, socially, and economically. Non-silence recognizes the need for feminist opinion and gender equality in every aspect of the collective society of citizenship, not just in public politics or the quantifiable economy.

Non-silence becomes a part of each aspect of a feminist citizen’s interactions with society by following Holloway Spark’s model for the variety of ways in which dissident citizenship interacts with inequalities between the “unequal publics” of a democracy. The non-silent model for feminist citizenship is closely related to Spark’s model for dissident citizenship; dissidence in a democratic society “is to maintain a principled oppositional stance against a more powerful group while remaining politically and publically engaged.”[2] The stark reality of the inequalities that exist between men and women throughout the world, even in the United States, necessitate feminism’s status as dissident against the more powerful groups that maintain these hegemonic inequalities. These inequalities, while most visible in the social sphere, are most quantifiable in the economic sphere: in the United States in 2013, women working full-time earned 78 cents for every dollar earned by men working full-time, resulting in a gender pay gap of 22 percent.[3] The inequalities represented by this gender pay gap require feminist citizenship to follow a model for dissident citizenship.

In this model, non-silence (as a form of dissidence) on feminism’s behalf interacts with a democratic society in four ways, through “discursive, performative, organizational, and “everyday” dissenting actions within and between … unequal publics that augment or replace institutionalized forms of democratic opposition.”[4] In the feminist’s case, these unequal publics are the two halves of society, men and women, and non-silence provides a non-institutionalized form of opposition to the hegemonic patriarchies present in democratic societies. Discursive, performative, and organizational non-silence are easily demonstrated in the political and economic spheres. Both the practice of law and business as a member of a collective society allow a feminist citizen to engage in elevated discourse, demonstrate a feminist opinion, and organize with other like-minded citizens to further this opinion, within each respective sphere. Indeed, feminist citizens need to use non-silence to challenge gender inequality in politics and the economy; Mary Dietz argues, “The need to challenge “arrogant public power” and an “amoral political order”–to use [Jean Bethke] Elshtain’s words–remains a crucial feminist task.”[5] Non-silence in the form of discourse, performance, and organization proves necessary for challenging the “public” and “political” aspects of gender inequality. In comparison, “everyday” non-silence is most arguably best demonstrated in the social sphere. Non-silence in the societal sphere is vital to feminist citizenship because in order for feminism to realize its goals of gender equality, it must pervade the social sphere. This pervasion starts with the education of society through interactions between citizens. The ground-level work of feminist citizenship begins with opening conversation between friends, family members, and co-workers in the social sphere that includes a feminist perspective. The feminist citizen’s attitude cannot adopt silence in these situations; in allowing their feminist perspective to be silenced they stifle the ultimate goals of feminism.

Equality that exists in more ways than simply on paper requires a daily revaluing of gender and gender differences through a feminist citizen’s conversations and choices. The social rights movement proves a clear example of how equality in the letter of the law does not translate to true political, social, and economic equality. In order to pursue this true equality, feminist citizenship must demonstrate itself through “everyday dissent” in some of the most daily activities of a collective society: conversation and choice. These two are most easily exemplified politically, through debates in the Senate or on voting day. In the same way, economic choices to combat inequality are clearly distinguishable. However, feminist injections into conversation and choice are perhaps most potent socially: conversations between citizens and choices that determine the citizen’s lifestyle are markers of the status of equality within a collective society. Social change is arguably the truest marker of equality. The revaluing of gender and gender differences in pursuit of equality demands non-silence; Dietz explains, “…only the language of freedom and equality, citizenship and justice, will challenge nondemocratic and oppressive political institutions.”[6] True social change obliges non-silence to incorporate this vocabulary of equality in the context of both conversation and choice. Feminist citizenship requires conversation and choice that reflect freedom and equality in the political, social, and economic spheres in order to instigate change.

Non-silence is especially important for women as feminist citizens, as it models a behavior that opposes a traditional, constructed instinct in many women across a hegemonic patriarchal society. Boys are known to be more likely to dominate a classroom discussion, a behavior pattern that continues to meetings in the workplace. If a feminist, as a citizen, allows his or her political opinions to be silenced within a democracy, he or she relinquishes the claim to citizenship. Coexisting as a feminist woman and as a citizen both grants the right and demands the obligation of non-silence from a woman, which requires her to act, with courage that “requires judgment and enables action,”[7] against her tendency for silence. Women in the United States face the most difficulty in combatting this silence most notably during “everyday” dissenting actions on feminism’s behalf; while the opportunity for non-silence arises often politically (e.g. the power to vote) and occasionally economically (e.g. closure of the payment gap), it arises on a daily basis socially. Adopting non-silence in those daily interactions between citizens, as a woman, is the most crucial aspect of this model for feminist citizenship.

Ultimately, feminist citizenship will achieve equality between genders will exist both quantitatively and qualitatively—on the Senate floor and on the street, in paychecks and in the minds of all—politically, economically, and socially, in a way that crosscuts the public and private spheres. By engaging in a daily recognition of the hegemonic patriarchy that exists in democratic societies through the practice of non-silence, feminist citizenship can move towards creating true social change and gender equality. This goal is not one easily recognized, and requires feminist citizens to pursue it relentlessly in order to continue gradual change towards equality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dietz, Mary. “Citizenship with a Feminist Face: The Problem with Maternal Thinking.” Political Theory 13.1 (1985): 19-37. Print.

Lister, Ruth. “What is Citizenship?” Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1997, 2003. 13-42. Print.

“Pay Equity & Discrimination.” Institute for Women’s Policy Research. N.p., 2010. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.

Sparks, Holloway. “Dissident Citizenship: Democratic Theory, Political Courage, and Activist Women,” Hypatia 12.4 (1997): 74-110. Print.