Building women's social citizenship: A five-point framework to conceptualise the work of women-specific services in rural Australia

0 (2007) 299–312www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Women's Studies International Forum 3

Building women's social citizenship: A five-point framework toconceptualise the work of women-specific services

in rural Australia☆

Robyn Mason

Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga NSW 2678, Australia

Synopsis

This article draws on research undertaken as part of a national study of rural women-specific services across Australia, completedin 2001. A detailed review and analysis of feminist citizenship theories was undertaken as part of the research, and a framework forconceptualising the contribution of rural women-specific services, comprising five components, was developed. The analysis andframework are described here, in the context of what is known about Australian rural women and service provision, andmaking use ofgeneral findings from the study. There are five components in the framework: recognition of women's diversity; bridging the public-private divide; addressing women's oppression; acknowledging women's agency; and facilitating women’s active participation insocial, political and community life. The framework is offered as a tool for conceptualising the work of women's services or projects,as a basis for developing service standards, and to stimulate debate about the usefulness of such an approach.© 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

As an Australian rural woman, social worker andformer manager of a rural Centre Against Sexual Assault(CASA), I chose to build on my lived experience andfocus my doctoral research on assessing the contributionto women's citizenship by feminist services, that is,services for women run by women (Weeks, 1994) inrural Australia. I wanted to know howwomen's services,including services against sexual assault, anti-violenceservices, women's health, legal and information ser-vices, facilitated women's progress towards social

☆ The research reported here was co-ordinated and supervised byAssociate Professor Wendy Weeks (1943–2004) — feminist, mentor,teacher, scholar and activist. This article is dedicated to her memory,and to all the women across Australia who participated in andsupported the study.

0277-5395/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2007.05.007

citizenship. One of my questions was therefore: Howcan I identify the ways in which women-specific servicesin rural Australia are advancing and encouraging ruralwomen's progress towards full participation in theircommunities? What would such a framework look like?

To answer this question, the first task was tocomplete a critical review and analysis of feministapproaches to citizenship. That analysis is presented inthe context of the study, especially those factors relevantto rural women in Australia. The article then outlines thecomponents of a framework for conceptualising femi-nist social citizenship. Findings from the study are usedto demonstrate the overall contribution of the partici-pating group of services to women's social citizenship.

Background to the study

Australia is a highly urbanised nation. The popula-tion is concentrated in urban centres in coastal regions in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2007.05.007

300 R. Mason / Women's Studies International Forum 30 (2007) 299–312

the east and south-east of the continent, and in a smallerregion in the south-west. There is considerable debateabout what constitutes ‘rural’. A broad definition ofrural as non-metropolitan or non-capital city has beenadopted by some researchers and planners (Dunn, 1989;Haberkorn, Hugo, Fisher, & Aylward, 1999). Othershave attempted to measure rurality by examining issuessuch as geography (Commonwealth Department ofHealth and Aged Care, 1999), population numbers anddistance from urban centres (Australian Institute ofHealth and Welfare, 1998), and population diversity anddemand for services (Nichol, 1990). Cameron-Jackson(1995, p. 1) argues for a definition of rurality that takesinto account ‘the subjective views of what ruralism is torural people’. Similarly, Dixon and Welch (2000) arguethat health outcomes may be influenced by a person'ssense of place and rurality. The significance of women'srelationship with place and the meanings they attach toit, for example, have been recognised as importantfactors in the success of community developmentprograms (Regional Women's Advisory Council, 2001).

In the research reported in this article, two indicatorsof rurality were employed. First, participants in the studychose to answer a section of the mailed questionnaire onrural services, and so self-selected an interest in rurality.Second, most of the services that participated in the studyare located in regional centres in Australia rather than insmall towns or remote locations, but they service a ruralhinterland. For this reason, I adopted the broad definitionof rural as non-capital city (Office of the Status ofWomen, 2002).

Rural people in Australia, as a minority, facedifficulties being seen and heard by urban dwellers.Small rural communities bear the brunt of rural decline.In the human services sector this presents problems ofservice delivery, community ownership and co-ordina-tion (Munn, 1999; O'Toole, Nesbitt, & Macgarvey,2002). Increasingly, ‘rural people are expected to livewithout the same level of services, indeed without theattributes of full citizenship, which metropolitan peopleexpect’ (Gray & Lawrence, 2001, p. 135).

The situation of rural women in Australia

Women and rural people have experienced margin-alisation in Australia — an urban, male-dominatedsociety. Rural women in Australia are doubly invisible(Teather, 1998), and rural women who are Aboriginal orimmigrant suffer a triple dose of invisibility (Alston,2000). In the literature, rural women have been theorisedas marginalised, invisible, subject to sex role stereotyp-ing and prohibited from participating in a wide range of

arenas affecting their lives. Their marginalisation andexclusion has been conceptualised by some researchersas a consequence of the intersection of rurality andgender (Alston, 1995; Dempsey, 1992; James, 1989;Poiner, 1990; Whatmore, Marsden, & Lowe, 1994). Atthe same time, they have used their agency to improvetheir individual and collective situation.

Information from a broad range of data sources aboutthe lives of rural women in Australia (Office of theStatus of Women, 2002) reveals that most rural womenlive in crowded settlements close to the coast, and thatthere are fewer women than there are men in ruralAustralia. Rural women see health professionals lessoften than their city sisters; they volunteer in largenumbers; they have less leisure time than men. They areemployed in primary industries or in service industriessuch as retail, education and the human services. One-third of the Australian women in vocational training arerural women, but many young women between the agesof 15 and 24 years are leaving rural areas to take upstudy or work opportunities elsewhere (Office of theStatus of Women, 2002: 17–18).

Rural women have faded in and out of Australiansocial policy. Governments have typically taken a narrowview and have seen the role of rural women embedded inthe family. This has been reinforced by the HowardLiberal-National Coalition government, in power since1996. Rural women's participation in local and regionalcommunities has been constrained by problems that theyhave outlined in reports and consultations over at least thelast three decades, including a lack of access to services,transport, childcare, reliable communication systems andthe prevalence of violence.

The study

I was a member of a research team at the University ofMelbourne, Australia, conducting a national study ofAustralian women-specific services. The study, a combi-nation of mail survey and interviews, was completed in2001, and examined, among other items, the philosophy,activities, organisational structure, target groups andparticular challenges experienced by 160 feministgovernment-funded services in every State and Territoryacross the nation. Additional questions relating to issuesand challenges for rural service providers were answeredby 74 services, based in rural Australia or with an interestin meeting the needs of rural women. The findingsindicated that, overall, rural women-specific services areactive advocates for women in their communities, acutelyaware of the nuances of their rural environment andproudly feminist in their orientation (Mason, 2004).

301R. Mason / Women's Studies International Forum 30 (2007) 299–312

Why Citizenship?

In a critical review of the available research aboutrural women, I discerned four possible explanations forthe marginalised and powerless situation depicted byvarious authors. These were: the myth of the rural idyll;the sexual division of labour; rural women as ‘other’;and the idea of a rural culture. The myth of the rural idyllincludes the notion that rural communities function likehappy families, hiding the social reality of living incountry towns (Bourke, 2001). Dempsey (1992), in astudy that made visible the oppression of women inSmalltown, highlighted this kind of mythology. Groupscalling for the recognition of social problems such asviolence against women are said to challenge the ruralidyll of harmony and traditional family life (Poiner,1990; Teather, 1994).

The sexual division of labour has also been seen as away of explaining rural women's powerlessness, forexample, by Poiner (1990), in her study of power ingender and social class relationships. She argued thatrural traditional values, such as the ideology of thefamily, impacted on the daily lives of rural women.Little (2002) argued that traditional attitudes aboutwomen's caring role in the family are common in ruralcommunities across developed countries.

A third view in the research sees rural women as‘other’. Depictions of rural life privilege the malemainstream while marginalising and excludinggroups and individuals that do not conform, includingwomen (Cloke & Little, 1997). A further explanationoffered is the influence of a rural culture. In a study ofwomen and violence in rural Australia, components ofthe rural culture included a belief in the integrity ofmarriage, the primacy of the family and maintenanceof property transfer between generations (Wendt &Cheers, 2002). In the mid-1990s, Alston (1995,p. 147) found that ‘feminism is generally disparagedin rural communities’.

All of these theoretical explanations have merit, andthey go some way towards explaining research findingsabout rural women in Australia. What they lack is anappreciation of women's agency and how women havestruggled to enhance their situation. In the reading,reflection and debate I have engaged in, therefore,theories of feminist social citizenship, an understandingof oppression, and an appreciation of women's agency,have merged to construct a more congruent frameworkfor understanding the experience of rural women as agroup, and their efforts to improve their situation inlocal, regional and wider settings. These efforts includethe work of women in women-specific services.

What is citizenship?

Adefinition of what is meant by citizenship and socialcitizenship is a necessary first step. In its origin in theancient Greek polis, the concept of citizenship related toresidence in the city (Yuval-Davis, 1997). Its earliestmeanings included notions of freedom, as city dwellersenjoyed freedom from feudal slavery. Marshall (1950/1963 p. 87) defined citizenship as a status ‘bestowed onthose who are full members of a community’, and onewhere all citizens share equal rights and duties. This formof civil citizenship, based on the status of freedom,applied only to men, as Marshall acknowledged, andpolitical rights were later granted to men of property. Theword citizen carries connotations of respect and dignity,and the values of citizenship have been described as‘weighty, monumental, humanist’ (Fraser & Gordon,1992, p. 45). Pnina Werbner and Nira Yuval-Davis(1999, p. 3) hold that citizenship appeals to visions of thefuture, the ideal and the aspirational; it is ‘the goldstandard against which the negotiated order is measuredand, inevitably, found wanting’. Interest in citizenshiphas increased in recent times with nation-states in turmoiland issues of migration challenging governments inEurope and elsewhere, including Australia, where therehas been community debate about the rights of asylumseekers, refugees and temporary denizens.

Feminism and social citizenship

An exploration of citizenship was not pursuedspecifically by feminist theorists in the second wavefeminist movement that gathered momentum at the endof the 1960s. Feminist theorists were concerned aboutwomen's oppression and the need for equality, but didnot necessarily frame these concerns in terms ofcitizenship. Rian Voet (1998, p. 6) believes that cit-izenship was seen to be about ‘power, political relations,the state, the law, and issues of political rights andobligations, but not with relations between the sexes’.She contends that some theorists saw feminism as anexploration of the private, while citizenship centred onthe public. In women's historical exclusion fromcitizenship, Ruth Lister adds, the public, male citizenmodel was the norm, contrasted with the private, femalenon-citizen (Lister, 1997a). Lister asks: How can such aheavily gendered concept, based on women's exclusion,be rendered useful to women's interests? How canwomen be included, rather than simply added on (Lister,1995)?

Despite women's history of exclusion from citizen-ship, in the 1990s some feminist theorists began to


explore the usefulness of citizenship theory for explain-ing women's continued struggle for full participation insocial and political life. Marshall defined social citi-zenship as:

“… the whole range from the right to share to the fullin the social heritage and to live the life of a civilizedbeing according to the standards prevailing in thesociety. The institutions most closely connected withit are the educational system and the social services.”(Marshall, 1950/1963, p. 74)

Marshall's definition of a citizen as someone who is afull member of a community leads Lister (1997b) toclaim that citizenship is not merely a legal framework,but one that also covers the social relationships amongindividuals, and between individuals and the state. Shesuggests that a discussion of citizenship needs toacknowledge that women's social relations differ frommen's. Similarly, while the meaning of ‘community’ inMarshall's definition is contested, Yuval-Davis (1997)contends that the use of ‘community’ in his conceptua-lisation opens the way to conceive of citizenship asoperating on a number of levels. Yuval-Davis believesthat it is possible to conceive of citizenship as areflection of people's membership of a range of groupscomprising local, regional, national, ethnic and interna-tional identities. Young (1990) presents similar catego-ries of difference, including geography.

Feminist citizenship theory and the welfare state

The literature on feminist citizenship includes analysisof women's contribution to and relationship with welfarestates and how this counts as social citizenship (Lister,1995, 1997a,b; Siim, 2000; Werbner and Yuval-Davis,1999; Yuval-Davis, 1997). Lister (1995) has argued that,in a paradoxical relationship, welfare states can advancecitizenship for women, and at the same time, relegatewomen to second-class status. Feminists engagedwith thestate from the beginning of the women's movement, toadvance women's interests. Women have campaignedsuccessfully for welfare rights and programs, despite theirposition outside the structures of power. According toLister (1997a), welfare organisations can be sources ofcommunity and political strength for women as workersor service users, especially when the service philosophyfacilitates genuine service user involvement. She citesexamples where women service users have mobilised toimprove conditions for themselves or their children,challenging the definition of need by experts whoperpetuate the powerlessness of service users by exclud-

ing them from decision-making. As well as being activeusers of services, Lister notes that women also contributeas providers of innovative programs to meet women'sneeds. Some of these, such as services for rape survivorsor women escaping violence, make public what waspreviously private, and so breach the public–privatedivide (Lister, 1997a).

Feminist citizenship and women's caring

While welfare states may provide economic indepen-dence for some women, they can bestow a status ofeconomic dependence for others, especially when socialpolicy is built on a male breadwinner model. In genderedstates, including Australia, women become the depen-dent parties, reliant on state benefits to support their workas mothers, or reliant on men, to carry out their unpaidwork in the home caring for children and maintaining thehousehold. Economic dependence, whether on the stateor on men, is demeaning for women and increases theirsense of powerlessness. In response to this problem,Lister supports the recognition and legitimation ofwomen's caring role. The challenge, as Lister acknowl-edges, is to ascertain how this can be done withoutlocking women into a stereotyped, maternalist positionthat continues to keep them out of power. Should thetraditional male version of social citizenship be univer-sally applied, or should a gender-differentiated versionof social citizenship be pursued to accommodate thedifferent role of women (Lister, 1997a)?

A more equitable division of labour between womenand men would undoubtedly assist women to improvetheir social citizenship status. Cass, for example, hassuggested that men should be disqualified from fullcitizenship unless they do their fair share of care work(Cass, 1994). This approach reframes the problem as oneof men's failure to care, rather than women's caring role.Lister (1997a) develops this idea further, when she arguesfor a degendering of the care ethic (covering the specificrelationships experienced in informal care), and itssynthesis with the justice or rights ethic (focusing on afair share of resources and liberated independence forwomen). She sees this combination of the two ethics as ameans of promoting women's social citizenship in a waythat recognises their diversity and their public and privateroles. Recognition of women's caring in this way wouldalso serve to promote difference as a positive resource(Young, 1996) rather than as an exclusionary barrier towomen seeking to assert their rights to participate as fullmembers of the community, that is, as citizens. For ruralwomen in Australia, for example, marginalised andinvisible according to the available research, such an


approach would address their exclusion and value theirparticipation, by recognising their roles as unpaid farmworkers, carers and nurturers.

Women: Equal but different

Questions of equality and difference have beencentral to the debate about feminist citizenship, mostlucidly articulated by Moira Gatens (1991). As Anthias(2002, p. 284) points out: ‘A person is treated equally iftheir difference is recognised, respected and allowedfor’. Citizenship theorists, faced with this challenge,have adopted approaches that elevate the private role ofwomen, for example by valuing caring, or dismantlethe gendered division of men's and women's roles toredefine and reshape broader roles for both sexes. Foras long as citizenship is defined in male terms,extolling masculine virtues, confined to activities inthe public sphere or elevating the status of breadwinneror soldier, the expectation is that women will have nochoice but to pursue citizenship by becoming the sameas men, thereby undermining or pathologising thepositive aspects of womanhood (Anthias, 2002). In thisdebate, Lister (1997a) argues that concepts arisingfrom male experience fail to take into account women'sinterests in the private sphere, and how those interestsinteract with the public sphere in the form of welfarestate institutions or community-based politics. As wellas formal political and civil activity, a feminist con-ception of citizenship needs to encompass communityactivism, where many women are currently engaged inworking for community benefit. This kind of commu-nity activism and involvement requires time andresources, not currently available to all women becauseof their position as unpaid carers or low-wage workers(Lister, 1997a). Rural women in Australia, for ex-ample, are constrained by their lack of time andresources to participate in formal decision-makingforums in rural communities, such as local government,yet they are engaged in maintaining the social cohesionof communities through their community and caringactivity. Often, this contribution is neither recognisednor valued.

Social policy and women's citizenship

Voet (1998) takes a slightly different approach,seeking to redefine the concept of social citizenship inorder to facilitate women's equal participation. Shepresents a feminist critique of three current social policyapproaches and their accompanying versions of socialcitizenship — social–liberal, communitarian and neo-

liberal. First, she argues that a social–liberal approach tocitizenship will tend not to see women's low participa-tion in political, business and cultural affairs as aproblem. Rather, women's absence in these arenas willbe seen as a result of their personal choice. Thissentiment echoes Margaret Alston's research on theAustralian agricultural industry (Alston, 2000), wheremen in the industry interpreted women's absence fromdecision-making bodies as indicative of women's lackof interest. In Alston's analysis, the men in the industryassume that the problem lies with the women rather thanthe structure. Proponents of a social liberal approachmight conclude that affirmative action programs forwomen have failed and that, despite the removal ofdiscriminatory barriers to their participation, women aresimply not suited to positions of power and influence,possibly because they are mothers or biologicallyotherwise unsuited.

The second approach considered by Voet, communi-tarian citizenship, has a focus on social participation, butnot specifically women's participation, and promotes atraditional view of the family (Voet, 1998). It is therefore,in her view, not likely to benefit women. This approachto community participation is prevalent in the AustralianCommonwealth government's approach to regionaldevelopment, where the emphasis is on communitybuilding and community leadership, with little attentionpaid to gender or power. Leadership courses offered towomen assume that it is their lack of experience and skillthat prevents them from taking on responsible roles in thecommunity, politics or business, rather than valuing theirexisting contribution in its own right.

Finally, Voet (1998) contends that in the neo-liberalframework of citizenship, the individual is ‘a bundle ofpreferences’, where the state has a minimal role inorder to maximise individual freedom. The interest ofneo-liberalism, she claims, is in equal opportunity butnot equal outcomes. Equal opportunity legislation inAustralia has not enabled rural women to advance theirinterests significantly in terms of employment andincome, or gain positions of power locally ornationally. Again, rural women, already marginalisedand excluded, are even less likely to overcome thesebarriers in a competitive, neo-liberal environment.

Active and sex-equal citizenship

Both Voet and Lister present ways forward in thequest for genuine social citizenship for women. Voet(1998: 136) argues for a feminist citizenship that shecalls ‘active and sex-equal’. She contends that her idealmodel of citizenship will mean the end of second-class


status for women and will increase respect for them, byredressing their material inequality and increasing theircapacity for social participation. In contrast to Lister'sapproach, she begins by taking the idea of activecitizenship as a worthwhile public good, and then buildsa feminist theory around it, rather than starting with theproblem of women and difference. Voet's (1998)framework is underpinned by four inter-related ideas.These are active citizenship, sex-equal citizenship, thecirculation of elites to ensure power sharing, andwomen-friendly changes in care and education arrange-ments for paid workers. She contends that fullcitizenship entails showing through action, one's statusas a citizen, rather than as a subject, and she lists thepreconditions for achieving this as freedom, rights andbasic material welfare. Voet holds that the ideal of activecitizenship implies taking part in decision-making andin paid work. Not everyone would be expected toparticipate, in her model, but the capacity andencouragement for participation would be an acceptedcommunity value. This changes the norm from onewhere women are simply added on, or where womenhave to make extraordinary arrangements in order toparticipate in community life, to one where they haveequal access and equal support for that participation.Changing the premise in this way would also challengethe prejudice and discrimination faced by women inpaid employment, including in rural areas, where, as wehave seen, a traditional view of women's role in thefamily has prevailed, applying pressure on women to bethe primary unpaid carers of children, and so limitingtheir opportunities to pursue professional careers orparticipate in public life.

The second plank of Voet's (1998) framework, sex-equal citizenship, takes a group perspective, where sheconsiders how members of each gender group shouldparticipate in being the rulers and the ruled. She advocatesequal decision-making bymen and women in positions ofpower and equal access to social and economic resourcesfor both men and women. In a society where activecitizenship is the norm, she argues, women's social andeconomic equality with men will facilitate greaterautonomy and power and encourage their greaterinvolvement in taking on responsibility in the community.Her third criterion requires that members of elite decision-making groups should alternate and circulate, not justbetween genders but also among individuals. Over time,Voet believes, this will result in equal decision makingbetween women and men. Finally, she advocates women-friendly citizenship, achieved through the dissolution ofthe public–private divide, including the provision of thematerial conditions that will enable women to be active

participants, such as child care services and guarantees ofsafety.

Voet goes on to set out three essential social conditionsfor active and sex-equal citizenship: an equal division ofpaid labour between women and men; the promotion oftalented people from lower to higher levels of decision-making; and an equal division of household work andcare between women and men. She also advocates mentalpreparation by women for the task of active citizenship,and urges them to be assertive in promoting their interests(Voet, 1998).

Citizenship as ‘differentiated universalism’

Where Voet's conceptualisation begins with a new,publicly agreed upon, definition of citizenship, Lister(1997a) proposes working towards a feminist citizenshipthrough a synthesis of rights, including social andreproductive rights, (that is, citizenship as a status), andobligations, including involvement in informal politics,(that is, citizenship as a practice). This synthesis iscoupled with the breaking down of the dualisms that, sheclaims, maintain women's second-class status, such as thejustice-care and public–private dichotomies. This syn-thesis is informed by a commitment to inclusiveness andpowered by the notion of human agency (to be describedbelow). The guiding principle for Lister is what she calls‘differentiated universalism’, where difference is recog-nised but not seen as a barrier for women. The public–private, justice-care, male–female dichotomies, shecontends, need to be re-articulated to unravel theirgendered meanings and expose citizenship's falseuniversalism. Lister's framework, in a dialectical ap-proach, makes difference the centrepiece of her con-ceptualisation. Indeed, she claims that ‘a woman-friendlycitizenship is… rooted in difference’ (Lister, 1997a,p. 198). In order to realise her guiding principle of‘differentiated universalism’, Lister proposes three stepsfor feminism to claim citizenship.

First, the ways that women have been excluded in thehistorical development of citizenship need to beexposed. Because of the false universalism underwhich citizenship has been promoted, women's exclu-sion has been seen as accidental rather than deliberate,or sheeted home to women as their fault for not assertingtheir rights. Lister sees women's deliberate exclusion asintegral to the way traditional notions of citizenshiphave evolved. Second, Lister argues that a similar falseuniversalism has been applied to the category ‘woman’,and that a gender analysis of difference is necessary inorder to accommodate women in all their diversity. Thisshould encompass difference in, for example, class,


race, disability and sexual preference, and, I would add,geography. Third, she advocates that the clash betweendifference and universalism, inherent in current con-ceptualisations of citizenship, be tackled. By seeing thistension as creative and positive, and by applying theprinciple of ‘differentiated universalism’, she believesthat our understanding of citizenship can be enhanced.

Women's oppression and citizenship

Building on these explorations of feminist citizen-ship, I find that Young's (1990) conceptualisation ofoppression provides additional theoretical evidence toexplain the exclusion and marginalisation of ruralwomen in Australia. Women's historical exclusionfrom citizenship and their continuing struggle for fullcitizenship rights can be interpreted as a form ofstructural oppression of women as a social group. Thisconceptualisation is especially useful when consideringa group of women with a shared identity, such as ruralwomen, and particularly relevant, as previously noted,in an era when national and international issues ofcitizenship are challenging governments everywhere.

It is worth quoting in full Young's definition ofoppression, a definition that emerged in new socialmovements in the 1960s and 1970s. She definesoppression as:

“…the disadvantage and injustice some people suffernot because a tyrannical power coerces them, butbecause of the everyday practices of a well-intentioned liberal society” . (Young, 1990, p. 41)

This definition locates oppression and injustice insocieties such as Australia— an affluent, industrialised,capitalist society, rather than in a stereotypical ‘thirdworld’ country or a one-party state. In this way, Young'sdefinition of oppression makes visible the invisible, byexposing the undercurrents of injustice beneath theveneer of equality. In a similar way, women-specificservices have worked to expose the structural andpersonal oppression of women in societies where theyhave theoretical equality with men. This applies inallegedly peaceful and idyllic rural communities as wellas in metropolitan cities in Australia (Alston, 1997;Coorey, 1989; Wendt & Cheers, 2002; Wendt, Taylor, &Kennedy, 2002).

Young (1990) outlines the characteristics of fivetypes of oppression experienced by social groups. Thefirst of these is exploitation, including gender exploita-tion. She argues that exploitation occurs when onegroup is advantaged by the work and effort performed

by another group. These arrangements are governed byrules about, for example, what constitutes work, how itis remunerated and what happens to profits. For women,it means handing over material products to men as wellas exerting energy in providing care and sex for men.Young uses the example of farm women, where womenoften produce goods that men then take to market wherethey reap the rewards. Women may also be exploited aspaid workers, in low wage jobs, suffer sexual harass-ment and other forms of discrimination.

Young's second form of oppression is marginalisation,which occurs when ‘a whole category of people isexpelled from useful participation in social life and thuspotentially subjected to severe material deprivation andeven extermination’ (Young, 1990, p. 53). Women werehistorically marginalised in their exclusion from citizen-ship, their incarceration in psychiatric or penal institu-tions, and their subjection to invasive welfare andmedicalintervention. Marginalised people may be dependent onothers because of disability, poverty or lack of rights.Young argues that they should still be accorded dignityand respect, despite their dependence, in contrast to a viewthat encourages only autonomous and independentmembers of society into full citizenship.

The third form of oppression presented by Young ispowerlessness. She sees this vividly illustrated in thepower of the professional class over the non-profes-sional class. Powerless people do not develop their fullpotential, do not enjoy control over their working livesand are not treated with respect at work or elsewhere.Young postulates that professional people acquire acertain respectability that opens up many opportunitiesto them in many areas of society. Non-professionalpeople, by contrast, experience prejudice, particularly inthe form of racism and sexism. In small town Australia,Dempsey (1992) found that women fill the majority ofthe unskilled and semi-skilled positions in the paidworkforce, and are rarely in professional roles.

The fourth form Young calls cultural imperialism,which she argues occurs when a dominant group treatsanother group as if its members are invisible, as the‘Other’. In Young's view, the values and culture of thedominant group become the norm, seen as representa-tive of the majority. The dominant group constructsothers who are different as deviant or inferior in order toprop up its power and perpetuate the different as ‘Other’.In the paradox of cultural imperialism, Young points outthat the imperialised group experience themselves asbeing invisible, simultaneously with being marked asdifferent.

Young's final identified form of oppression isviolence. She sees this as injustice because of its


systemic nature, directed at members of certain groups,such as women or non-white people, simply because oftheir membership of that group. For this reason, forexample, every woman has good reason to fear that shewill be raped. Living with such fear and threat affectsone's capacity to exercise autonomy and freedom.Women, as research and crime statistics reveal, are mostoften the victims of violence in their own homes and atthe hands of a known perpetrator. Their capacity to livefree from fear is significantly diminished, when eventheir own home is not safe.

Women's agency

Despite women's earlier exclusion from formalcitizenship, their continuing struggles to achieve socialcitizenship and the oppression they experience, womenhave not been passive victims but have exercised agencyto gain influence and claim social rights. This quality isessential if women are to achieve the active citizenshipstatus advocated by Voet (1998). Women's agency istherefore a central concept in my analysis of women'scitizenship theories because it explains how and whysome rural women have refused to be compliant orsubservient in their second-class state and why ruralwomen-specific services have actively challenged thegender order in rural communities.

Iris Young defines agency in this way:

“Individuals are not primarily receivers of goods orcarriers of properties, but actors with meanings andpurposes, who act with, against, or in relation to oneanother.” (Young, 1990, p. 28)

Eduards (1994) sees human agency as natural. Shebelieves that people will try to control what is happeningto them and around them, rather than remain passive, andshe cites research that demonstrates women's struggleagainst injustice throughout history. She acknowledges, inrecognition of the breakdown of monolithic theory, thatnot everyone has the same capacity for agency, dependenton factors such as class, race, location and so on. A theoryof women's agency needs to take account of the diversityof women that we recognise today. Eduards claims thatfeminism is ‘a theory of women's agency and women'scollective action’, in contrast to other theoretical perspec-tives where women are seen as individuals or members ofa particular class. She argues that only women will workon behalf of other women to achieve change in sexualpower relations. Feminism, then, espouses that ‘womenhave agency, and need it as women’ (Eduards, 1994,p. 182, her emphasis). She contends that this form of

collective action, by women and for women, has beenrestricted by the rules of patriarchy that have served toexclude women.

A theory of feminist citizenship, according to Lister(1997a), allows for a rightful recognition of women'sagency. Her theorisation involves the interplay ofwomen's agency and the structural barriers to beconfronted. Her synthesis of the civic republican andthe liberal-rights traditions of citizenship involves adynamic relationship between rights and politicalparticipation ‘fired by the notion of human agency’(Lister, 1997a, p. 196). Her description of citizenshipagency is enlightening:

“To act as a citizen requires first a sense of agency, thebelief that one can act; acting as a citizen, especiallycollectively, in turn fosters that sense of agency. Thus,agency is not simply about the capacity to choose andact but it is also about a conscious capacity which isimportant to the individual's self-identity. The devel-opment of a conscious sense of agency, at both thepersonal and political level, is crucial to women'sbreaking of the chains of victimhood and theiremergence as full and active citizens.” (Lister, 1997a,p. 38, her emphasis)

In this description Lister summarises the journeyundertaken by many women who have made thepersonal the political. Lister acknowledges that assertiveaction as a citizen requires a strong sense of identity andself-confidence. She suggests that women's activities inthe informal sphere, in the neighbourhood and thecommunity can foster these attributes.

Developing a view of citizenship more broadly, Siim(2000) includes various arenas of women's activity whenshe explores agency in the context of an enabling form ofpower. She sees agency as the key to citizenship in thewayit links state, market and civil society and the many wayswomen can participate. In her framework, there are twoelements to be understood in a study of social and politicalcitizenship. These are, first, the notion of active citizenshipacross different political arenas, including the neighbour-hood, the workplace, social movements and the welfarestate; and second, the public–private divide and itsaccompanying beliefs about gender and the family. Siimargues that these two dimensions of citizenship ‘expresswho the agents are, the kind of politics and where thepolitics takes place, that is, the interaction of institutions,culture, discourses, policies and human agency’ (Siim,2000, p. 8). Her broad view of citizenship arenas meansthat women's agency is just as legitimate and empoweringfor womenwhen it is used at the neighbourhood level, as it


is when it is used in parliament. Women's collectiveagency, Eduards (1994) contends, turns women intopolitical actors, resulting in real political gains, individualand group empowerment and exposure of gendered socialrelations. Lister (1997a) refers to the way women's rightswere linked to the struggle for international human rightsin the 1993 Vienna Declaration and the 1995 BeijingDeclaration, for example. Women's agency, on a nationalscale, has resulted in gains for women including acommitment to equal rights in South Africa, andcommunity movements in Northern Ireland. Otherdocumented examples of women's agency include studiesof women in Sweden (Hobson, 1999), research onwomen's services and women's advocacy in Australia(Weeks, 1994, 1996); work on rural women's networks inAustralia, New Zealand and Canada (Teather, 1992a,b,1998) and histories of women's activism such asMcCorkingdale's (1948) history of the Women's Chris-tian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Victoria, Australia –an organisation that fought for women's suffrage in thenineteenth century– andMarian Sawer's (2003) essays onwomen and social liberalism in Australia. These areexamples of transformative agency (Abrams, 1999) wherewomen work collectively to redress oppression.

A summary

An integrated theory of feminist social citizenshipneeds to include several key components. The argu-ments of feminist citizenship theorists suggest that thealleged universalism of citizenship is predicated on afalsehood, and that women have been deliberatelyexcluded. The public–private divide constrains andrestricts women to a private realm where caring is theprimary role, and as long as this role is undervalued,women will need to become like men to enjoy thebenefits of full participation in the community. In theview of Voet (1998), an ideal of active and sex-equalcitizenship incorporates an equal division of labourbetween women and men, equal decision-making andwomen-friendly arrangements so that women have thecapacity to participate on an equal footing with men.Lister (1997a) emphasises the need to expose women'sexclusion from citizenship, engage in a gender analysisof difference and tackle the dualism of difference anduniversalism. Lister's principle of differentiated univer-salism disrupts the public–private dichotomy, andpositions difference as a resource, rather than a problem.

An understanding of the barriers to women'sparticipation as social citizens is necessary in order tobuild social citizenship. Young's (1990) analysis ofoppression offers an illuminating explanation. She

suggests that oppression is likely to be found in ‘theeveryday practices of a well-intentioned liberal society’(Young, 1990, p. 41). She describes five types ofoppression — exploitation, marginalisation, powerless-ness, cultural imperialism and violence. The finalcomponent of a feminist approach to citizenship isagency. Despite women's exclusion, marginalisationand powerlessness, they are not passive victims.Women's agency explains, for example, the establish-ment of women-specific services and the progress of thewomen in agriculture movement in Australia. A theoryof agency recognises women as actors taking control oftheir lives, to the extent that this is possible due tofactors such as their class, race and location, and takesaccount of women's diversity, including their rurallocation. It also makes possible the feminist connectionbetween the personal and the political.

A framework for assessing feminist citizenship

Following this critical review and analysis of thecontribution of key feminist theorists, I suggest thatthere are five major requirements in a feministframework for building women's social citizenship inrural women-specific services. They are: the recognitionof women's diversity; bridging the public–privatedivide; addressing women's oppression; acknowledgingwomen's agency; and facilitating women's activeparticipation in social, political and community life. Inow briefly discuss each of these components in thecontext of my research on women-specific services inrural Australia to demonstrate how such a frameworkcan be applied. Findings from the study are reportedhere in general terms to provide an overall view.

Recognising women's diversity

The first component of a feminist social citizenshipframework, I suggest, is the recognition of women'sdiversity, including location. A conceptualisation ofwomen's social citizenship needs to include a consid-eration of a woman's rural or urban location as a factoraffecting her access to citizenship. This requires a shiftin thinking, similar to the post-structural shift acknowl-edging the impact of race, class, ability, ethnicity andsexual preference on women's access to rights andresources. Such a recognition means that geography anddistance become factors to consider when exploring theimpact of social policy, or when planning services orallocating funding for programs in rural areas. In achallenge to the city-centric nature of service provision,where planning for services is done in the cities and


transplanted to a rural location, rural women-specificservices recognise women's diversity when they tailorprograms specifically to meet rural women's needs.

In an example of how service providers demonstratetheir understanding of their local context, when askedabout their concern for particular groups of women, ruralservices placed an emphasis on Aboriginal and TorresStrait Islander women, rural women and older women,reflecting the likely location of these groups of women inrural Australia. This was different from the response ofmetropolitan services, who saw women from non-Englishspeaking countries as their priority group. In a furtherdemonstration of their recognition of rural women'sparticular needs, the rural services, in response to aquestion about future issues likely to face women'sservices, listed transport, access to female doctors andaccess to birthing choices as the most significantchallenges. These are among the problems that have beenraised by rural women over many years, and that will beexacerbated in a climate of continuing service withdrawal.

Similarly, services showed that they appreciated theeffects of rurality on women's lives and on access toservices, when they were asked to list the particular issuesthey faced as service providers.More than 80%of the ruralservices listed access as the most pressing issue. Thisincluded the loss or lack of services and the lack of choiceof services. Service providers reported difficulties forwomen accessing services in general, and were especiallyconcerned about access to information for women in theirregions. Services reported that there were few specialistservices, few female clinicians and a dearth of counsellingservices. There was little choice available for womenseeking services, and few serviceswhere referrals could bemade. Across the country, providers reported inadequatelocal services, decreasing resources and a loss of services.

More than half the rural services named distance andisolation as the next most significant issue they faced.Here they included notions of remoteness and vastness,as well as social isolation for women living in theseareas. Distance prevented women from attendingservices and restricted workers' capacity to visit outlyingareas. It also added to a sense of professional isolation forproviders. Almost 40% of rural providers listed theacknowledgement of rural factors in funding and servicedelivery, including the urbo-centric nature of serviceplanning and funding, as the next most pressing issue.Their concerns included the extra costs of running a ruralservice and recognition of rural factors in the servicemodels funded.

These findings about rural service provision areimportant, not only because the work of these serviceshas not been documented previously, but also because

they demonstrate that rural services for women are notsimply replicas of urban services in a different location,but are tailored to meet their rural context. In this way,rural women-specific services demonstrate their com-mitment to recognition of rural women's diversity.

Bridging the public–private divide

The second component of a feminist framework forsocial citizenship concerns the bridging of the public–private divide. I suggest that this bridging is necessary ifwe are to move towards Lister's (1997a) ‘differentiateduniversalism’ or Voet's (1998) sex-equal citizenship. Inrecognition of the importance of these processes, one ofthe major goals of the women's movement is to makevisible the hitherto invisible nature of women's lives, bynaming and making public the otherwise privateexperiences of women in families, as mothers, wivesand partners, daughters-in-law and unpaid carers.Women-specific services were established to offerwomen more relevant and responsive services thangender-neutral organisations provided. The service re-sponse included acceptance, documentation and recogni-tion of women's lived experiences in the family, thecommunity, the workplace, the hospital, the courtroomand other social institutions. Those services, firstestablished in Australia in the 1970s, have contributedto exposing the neglect and abuse of women by the healthand justice systems, the intimate crimes of violenceagainst women, the denial of women's right to informa-tion, and the discrimination suffered by women acrosssociety.

Rural women-specific services are active participantsin the continuing struggle to redress these injustices. Inso doing, they attempt to bridge the public–privatedivide by tackling sensitive and controversial matterssuch as violence against women in rural communities,rape and sexual assault, divorce, women's sexuality, thegendered nature of farm inheritance, women's lack ofpower in families and rural communities, the medica-lisation of childbirth and women's rights to legalassistance. These issues are confronting in any location,but are particularly challenging in the rural milieu,where, as previously noted, research has reported thattraditional views of women and the family still prevail.

Rural service providers participating in the studyreported many ways in which they bridge the public–private divide. Their very existence is a political statementin itself, in that they announce their partisan and women-centred philosophy simply by opening their doors. Whenthey listed the strategies used to ensure that women hadaccess to services, providers included publicity and


promotion of the service, outreach and mobile services,and networking and collaboration with other services.These strategies serve to place women's issues, formerlyprivate and hidden, on the public agenda in ruralcommunities. Services reported using newsletters, web-sites and advertising to promote their work; some ranpublic meetings and forums to raise issues of importance;free telephone numbers were offered by others to improveaccess. Some services operate lending libraries and mailbooks and resources to women in distant areas. Outreachservices, offered away from the central base in outlyingareas of the service catchment, are another means bywhich rural services heighten awareness of issuespertinent to women's lives. Services also engaged innetworking and collaboration with other services, in orderto have a greater impact in communities. Activities in thisvein included setting up a network of service providers towork towards better service responses for women;developing partnerships with other specialist women'sservices or with mainstream organisations; working withcommunity leaders to raise awareness of violence againstwomen; collaborating to run workshops, conferences andjoint projects. In these ways, rural women's services aremaking political statements in rural communities, assert-ing that issues relevant to women that were previouslyhidden are legitimate areas for work and struggle.

Making the private public carries risks for womenwho use services and women who operate them. Workof this nature affects the safety and privacy of serviceusers and staff. There are difficulties associated withconfidentiality and privacy in small towns and this mayhave an impact on service operation. Services reportedthat the location of the service, for example, needs to becarefully considered. Women using the service need tofeel confident that their privacy will be protected, whenentering, attending and leaving the service. A relatedissue, reported by a small number of services, concernsworker exposure. The manager of the local sexualassault support service, for example, may be known orrecognised by many people in the town. This may meanthat she struggles to maintain her privacy and safety andthat of her family. For women escaping violence, issuesof privacy and safety are paramount.

Addressing women's oppression

Addressingwomen's oppression is the third componentin a framework of feminist social citizenship. In Young's(1990) conceptualisation, a commitment to addressingrural women's oppression would need to focus on theways in which they experience exploitation, margin-alisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and vio-

lence. Services participating in the study addressed theseproblems in various ways and in varying degrees,depending on their purpose. One could argue that thecontinued funding of these services, in itself, addressesaspects of rural women's oppression. Services are staffedby professional and semi-professional women, in com-munities where, often, women are in low-paid andpowerless positions (Dempsey, 1992). When asked torespond to a question about their service philosophy, thepercentage of support from the rural services was higherthan for the metropolitan services for every element ofwomen-centred service philosophy. The rural services hadsignificantly higher responses for offering an empoweringapproach to practice, ensuring a respectful response to allwomen, accessibility, and a women-centred analysis ofissues. It is obvious that a commitment to redressing theoppression of rural women needs to be accompanied by acommitment to a women-centred service approach. Inrural areas, this may be more challenging because ofcommunity attitudes. Some services commented on this,saying that police, other services and some communitymemberswere unhelpful. In some cases,women's serviceswere perceived to be a community threat, and sufferedstigma because of their role. Women running servicesbelieved that the very existence of women's serviceschallenge a degree of resistance in some communities toacknowledge the reality of violence against women or theneed for equitable resources for women.

The rural services in this study confront women'soppression by standing up for a women-centredapproach to practice. In a rural area, philosophicaldifferences between women's services and the main-stream are starkly apparent and are played out in thecouncil chamber, the courtroom, the police station, thehospital and the conference room. In a small community,a women-specific service needs the ideological strengththat comes from a shared philosophy, to continue totackle women's oppression on many fronts. Such aphilosophy affords service providers a strong foundationfor women-centred advocacy in rural communities. Insuggesting changes to improve rural services, providerssought a commitment to a central place for women'sservices and feminist practice in the rural environment.They wanted to see new resources for women, includingmulti-purpose women's centres, more women-friendlyservice arrangements and financial support for ruralwomen to travel to specialist services in the city.

Acknowledging women's agency

The acknowledgement of women's agency is thefourth component in a feminist framework for social


citizenship. This recognition is necessary to explain thework that women's services do to meet the needs of theirconstituency, often above and beyond their stated role orfunding allocation. Women who work in feministservices, by definition, recognise women's personal andcollective agency, both in their individual practice withwomen and in the public and community stance they take,with their service users, on matters affecting women'slives. The study did not include interviews with serviceusers, but service providers report examples wherewomen's use of a service can be a first step in regainingcontrol over her life, as she calls on her personal agencyand draws strength from the collective agency of thewomen's service. Personal development of this nature canstem from increased access to information, counselling,joining support groups orworking on political campaigns.

The clearest examples of women's collective agencyfrom the study are the networking and collaboration thatservices are engaged in, as previously noted, and the manyachievements reported by participants. The plethora ofactivity undertaken by this group of small services isimpressive, especially in the period under study whenservices were facing threats to their survival from changesin government policy and cuts to rural service provision.Examples of what services were able to achieve include:restructuring organisations to be more responsive towomen; increasing visibility by running education pro-grams in schools, using themedia or holding streetmarchesand displays; developing innovations such as setting up ashopfront service or projects for older women, Aboriginalwomen and immigrant women; running campaigns for lawreform, consumer affairs and health on local, state andnational levels. These achievements illustrate the power ofwomen's collective agency in advancing the socialcitizenship of women in rural Australia.

Facilitating women's active participation in social,political and community life

The final component in a feminist social citizenshipframework, I suggest, is the facilitation of women'sactive participation in social, political and communitylife. Public participation of this nature by women isessential if we are to progress towards the active and sex-equal citizenship advocated by Voet (1998). In ruralcommunities, women's contribution, both paid andunpaid, is often invisible and devalued. The work ofwomen's services may be denigrated and practitionerscriticised for confronting difficult issues. The safety andprivacy of womenwho access and provide rural services,as noted above, may be at risk. This creates barriers forwomen who want to make a public contribution.

The rural services participating in the study seemedundeterred by these factors, in that they took an overtlyfeminist stance in their communities. As noted earlier,their service philosophy is staunchly women-centred; theywant their feminist practice and service models acknowl-edged and supported; they battle sexist and conservativeattitudes in their communities. Although the study did notpursue specific questions of women's public participation,service providers referred tomembership of local, regionaland statewide networks, lobbying politicians and fundingbodies, advocating to decisionmakers on behalf orwomenservice users. Some services had management or advisorycommittees, providing opportunities for women toparticipate in decision-making about the service. Workersrepresented women's services on peak bodies or govern-ment bodies; they wrote submissions to governmentinquiries and policy reviews; they hosted public forumsand conferences where women played major roles; theyengaged in research activity to enhance understanding ofissues important to women. In these ways, rural women-specific services asserted their public role as legitimateplayers in the social and political life of their communities.Women working in rural women-specific services areactively involved in their communities, pursuing apolitical agenda that will benefit all women.

How useful is the framework?

From this analysis, I conclude that the use of aframework for feminist social citizenship is a new anduseful way to conceptualise the study of women-specificservices in rural Australia. I cannot conclude that socialcitizenship has now been achieved for women in ruralAustralia, nor can I assume that to be a realistic goal.However, I suggest that the framework can serve toreframe our thinking about service provision, movingaway from the somewhat meaningless measures ofservice user throughput required by funding bodies, tothinking about broader service goals in areas wherewomen in rural areas must make an impact if women'sequality is to be achieved. In a conceptualisation based ona feminist social citizenship framework, rural women areacknowledged as active agents addressing the issuesaffecting their lives, and rural women-specific serviceproviders are seen to be active advocates for women intheir communities and regions. This conceptualisationchallenges the research paradigm that has been dominantin the study of rural women and communities in Australia(for example,; Poiner, 1990; Dempsey, 1992), and ruralservice provision (for example, Crago, Sturmey, &Monson, 1996; Macklin, 1995) where the emphasis hasbeen on challenges and difficulties, rather than on the


resilience, creativity and energy of rural service users andservice providers. Although this is beginning to change,with an increase in social research being undertaken inrural Australia, more work by rural women scholars isnecessary to increase our limited understanding of thenature of feminist work outside Australia's capital cities.

Citizenship has lost some of its appeal as a theoreticalapproach for feminists, so it is my hope that this articlemay help to revive interest in its value for conceptualis-ing the feminist project in other areas, such as violenceagainst women, migration issues, women and work, andwomen's political and social activism on many fronts.As Anthias (2002, p. 275) argues: ‘Longings for justice,for equality, for recognition are part of the feministproject’. The framework is presented here to stimulatefurther interest and debate about how this conceptuali-sation of feminist social citizenship might make a usefulcontribution to that project. The framework may wellhave a more practical application, for example, as abeginning list of standards for a women's service, a wayfor service users to evaluate their service experience orfor practitioners to use as a yardstick for assessing theextent to which their practice contributes to the broadergoals of enhancing women's social citizenship.

Conclusion

This article has presented a review and analysis of themajor theoretical debates in a feminist approach to socialcitizenship. From this review, a framework for feministcitizenship was presented, comprising five components.These are: the recognition of women's diversity; bridgingthe public–private divide; addressing women's oppression;acknowledging women's agency; and facilitating women'sactive participation in social, political and community life. Iused the example of rural women-specific services inAustralia to demonstrate the application of the frameworkto a particular field. The framework is presented as a newway of conceptualising rural women and the supportservices offered to them in rural Australia, and as a potentialtool for feminist researchers and practitioners in other fields.

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Documents

Building women's social citizenship: A five-point framework to conceptualise the work of women-specific services in rural Australia