Brennan 175 this, it is worth questioning who is being served by the exclusion of certain populations? What is to be gained and what is to be lost in granting or withholding citizenship, and by whom? The concept of patriarchal power is central to feminist theory and so too is it pivotal to these questions around exclusion. Bringing us back in time, Lay Lee points out that ‘deprivation on the ground of sex or gender is not prohibited under the 1961 Statelessness Convention’.33 In fact, there is no mention of gender or sex with regards to statelessness in either the 1954 or 1961 Conventions on Statelessness. However, there is one exception under Article 24 of the 1954 Convention, where it is stated that stateless persons should receive the same treatment as nationals in respect of “women’s work”. Additionally, Articles 1 and 5 of the 1961 Convention also contain references to the categories of children “in wedlock” and “out of wedlock” as being owed an opportunity to acquire nationality. This is an interesting distinction to make between children and requires further unpacking. It does not state that children born in or out of wedlock are owed an “equal” opportunity. As such, the Convention appears to endorse a justification of the different treatment of children based on the child’s “legitimacy”. The idea that women, specifically women of ethnic minorities, experience oppression differently to men does not appear to have been a consideration for the Convention’s drafting committees. We do know, however, that the gender question was given fleeting and dismissive consideration by the drafters of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Edwards’ examination revealed that the travaux préparatoires indicated that the drafters had ‘doubts that there would be any cases of persecution on account of sex’.34 They asserted that equality was a matter for national legislation. This idea that women and equality are domesticated issues points again to Pateman’s feminist interpretations of the public/private dichotomy. Edwards continues: It is no surprise that there was not a single woman among the plenipotentiaries who met in Geneva in 1951 to draw up the Convention.35 Knowing that the 1954 Statelessness Convention was originally an annex to an early draft of the 1951 Refugee Convention, that means that like Alice Edwards’ enlightening work, an examination of the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Convention’s travaux préparatoires and the delegates in attendance would be a welcome addition to feminist-statelessness research. Such an examination also speaks to this paper’s earlier call to pause and reflect on our origins as a sector. Excluding gender in 1954, a pivotal point in the history of statelessness, and addressing gender discrimination in a separate Convention (The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is where, I would argue, the compartmentalization of gender was crystallized. On the other hand, it can be argued that CEDAW, and other human rights mechanisms such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), continue to resolve the shortcomings of the statelessness Conventions.36 CEDAW and CRC are indeed more widely ratified and are stronger in their banning of sex-based discrimination, which, at least on the surface, makes the public/private distinction of international law “historic”. However, to uncritically celebrate the existence of these treaties is to celebrate a continued compartmentalization gender issues that instead ought to be treated as structural and all-pervasive. It may also be argued that the statelessness Conventions’ ­omissions of considerations regarding gender differences is more a reflection of that period, and not necessarily specific to the sector. It is true, that history has had to resolve the initial exclusion of experiences of women and other structurally disenfranchised groups from a whole host of sectors and fields. The point here, however, is to be cognizant of this 1954 oversight so that our future work continues to read in feminist understandings of patriarchy, gender and power. While the analysis by Lay Lee and Pateman satisfy my viewpoints as a feminist, their reliance on political theory and its conflation of the term citizenship with membership/participation is unhelpful in statelessness research. Ultimately, Lay Lee’s inclusion of “de facto/effectively stateless” female migrant workers in 33 34 35 36 T Lay Lee, Statelessness, Human Rights and Gender (Brill Nijhoff 2005) 132. A Edwards, ‘Transitioning Gender: Feminist Engagement with International Refugee Law and Policy 1950–2010’ (2010) 29(2) ­Refugee Survey Quarterly 21. Ibid. At present, Dr Cassandra Mudgway, Auckland University of Technology Law School, is investigating the strength of Article 5 CEDAW in obligating states to dismantle patriarchal structures and attitudes, from the government to the private sphere. See, University of Melbourne ‘Patriarchy in International Human Rights Law’ (2019) <https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/iilah/news-and-events/ events-2019/dr-cassandra-mudgway-seminar>.