Incomplete Citizenship of the Plantation Community: Access to Governance Institutions and Public Service Delivery As Amali Philips (2003-4: 88) argues, women in the plantations have been experiencing multiple marginalisation as descendants of immigrants, as minorities, and as women. In fact, this pattern largely afflicts their capability to gain access to legally mandated public services. This becomes evident when they attempt to access poverty alleviation subsidies, disaster relief, housing, elderly payment, and subsidies for pregnant mothers, and so forth. Thus, one could argue that the Plantation Community women continue to hold a different citizenship experience or diminished form of citizenship compared to men in this community. This is simply because of the gendered nature of citizenship. Therefore, they are less likely to realise the full potential of citizenship entitlements. Women and men have different experiences of citizenship due to the socio-cultural construction of citizenship (Philips, 4). In the case of plantation women, to improve their access to governance, there is a need to re-gender citizenship and ensure gender neutral citizenship approaches. As long-standing discrimination of women in governance and other spheres has diminished their human capability and social capital, they did not have access to engage in community organisations, networks and associations, and participation was also largely restricted, though there are some changes with younger women making progress in education. All these factors prevented them from actively practising citizenship rights and entitlements. The legal status of citizenship is unlikely to have an impact on plantation women as they are unable to break the vicious circle of inequality entrenched socially and culturally in this community. More importantly, even in the plantation system, women’s access to supervisory positions, leadership positions in 43