2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) The exercise of this sovereignty has also led to situations where states have been able to use their powers to exclude those whom they consider undesirable. Noora A Lori uses the term ‘precarious citizenship’ to describe people who are unable to acquire full citizenship rights, and instead live in a liminal, ad hoc space.27 She proposes that there are certain populations who are rendered precarious by virtue of being unrecognised by the states they live in.28 This leads to a lack of ‘permanent and secure’ citizenship rights for significant sections of the population, who are rendered ‘invisible in the state’s legal self-image’ .?? B __ Differential Citizenship The fundamental premise of citizenship is equality; once one is a citizen, their membership in society is theoretically equal to that of everyone else.2° However, such formal equality is rarely realised, with distinctions in rights being based on property ownership, race, ethnicity and, pertinently, gender. It is gender that is of importance to this analysis. The idea of ‘universal’ citizenship, as per Ruth Lister, is false and privileges the male.3! Citizenship has evolved around a strong patriarchal construct. The aspirations to equality before the eyes of the state that characterise citizenship have historically been denied to women and other marginalised genders.32 Many aspects of citizenship were not extended to women for a significant period.?? Patriarchal structures ensured that most women did not have access to features of political or civil citizenship. The rights to vote, own property, sign contracts, freedom of residence and labour, etc have not been universally made available to women in most cultures.34 Citizenship is an exercise in participating in the public sphere. However, since women have historically been outside that space and relegated to the private sphere, they have been considered an inferior class. This renders them unfit for ‘male’ citizenship.3> Moreover, even after women were granted political rights, the extension of citizenship to women has not occurred in the same measure — this phenomenon has occurred because of conditions determined by men. As an illustrative example, even today women remain underrepresented and discriminated against in educational institutions, workplaces and public positions such as elected bodies.3® Citizenship, in theory and in practice, has therefore evolved in a way that integrally and systematically excludes women. Given their ‘primary orientation to the care of children, husbands, and elderly relatives’,37 women do not experience political or social 27 28 29 30 Noora A Lori, ‘Statelessness, “In-Between” Statuses, and Precarious Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Baubéck, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (2017) 744. ibid. ibid 748. 32 TH Marshall and Thomas Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class, vol 2 (Pluto Press 1992) 6-8. Ruth Lister, ‘Citizenship and Gender’ in Edwin Amenta, Kate Nash and Alan Scott (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (Wiley-Blackwell 2012) 372, 374-75. Eckert (n 9) 311; Sylvia Walby, ‘Is Citizenship Gendered?’ (1994) 28(2) Sociology 379, 380- 33 34 35 Walby (n 32) 380-81. ibid. Lister (n 31) 373-74. 37 Walby (n 32) 386. 31 36 81. Linda C McClain and Joanna L Grossman, Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship (Cambridge University Press 2009) 5-6. 240