2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) Feminist Ferocity and Foresight From as early as 1905, feminist foresight recognised the perils of statelessness, and the word itself was very much part of feminist activist’s vernacular during that period. In 1926, Bertha Lutz, prominent Brazilian suffragette and zoologist, wrote that one of the results of conflicts in nationality laws between nations was ‘total loss of nationality rights in any country, with the attendant loss of legal protection and citizenship’. 110 In Lutz’s piece, persons without nationality are referred to by the German word, heimatlos (homelandless). 111 In 1925, Chrystal Macmillan explained how statelessness occurs from the restriction of women’s independent right to a nationality, and spoke of the need to cultivate international action and agreement between states ‘in order to prevent the hardships which arise from statelessness or from conflicts of law’. 112 Although it is virtually a rite of passage in statelessness academia to cite Hannah Arendt’s 1966 reflection on citizenship as ‘the right to have rights’, 113 this same sentiment was in the hearts of feminists in the 1920s, with Macmillan pointing out that ‘nationality is the most fundamental of political rights’. 114 Similarly, British president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Margery Corbett Ashby, described nationality as the ‘most important of all personal privileges’. 115 In the history of statelessness, it is vital not only to acknowledge the vigorous activism by feminist campaigners, but also their scholarship on the issue. Half a century before a legal definition even existed, statelessness was seen by feminist scholars and organisations as a major issue facing women. At the core of the early campaigners’ demands was a whole-hearted commitment to equality, a commitment that can be looked at in two ways. Firstly, it could be argued that feminists’ battle was against the use of citizenship laws as an instrument of subordination and exclusion. This struggle foresaw issues that arise from exclusionary citizenship laws today, and not just discrimination against women. De Gouges’s feminist manifesto, in eighteenth century France, was a recognition of how the legal citizenship status coming into existence was intrinsically founded on the exclusion of others. Among the ‘motley assortment of civic outsiders’ defined as passive citizens, were the stable women, born into and remaining in the role of the citizen’s ‘Other’. 116 This is a practice of defining a citizen in opposition to what it is not and continues to this day. Patriarchal agendas attempt to maintain power and dominance by excluding certain ‘Others’ from state membership. 117 For example, in the context of statelessness among the Rohingya community, and the potential statelessness of Muslim Indians of Bengali heritage 110 Bertha Lutz, ‘Nationality of Married Women in the American Republics’ (1926) 60(4) Bulletin of the Pan American Union 392, 396. ibid 399. Macmillan (n 7) 152. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Schocken Books 1951) 296. Chrystal Macmillan, The Nationality of Married Women (Nationality of Married Women Pass the Bill Committee 1931) 7. 115 Guerry (n 7) 81. 116 Smart (n 22) 134. 117 Deirdre Brennan, ‘Statelessness and the Feminist Toolbox: Another Man-Made Problem with a Feminist Solution?’ (2019) 24(2) Tilburg Law Review 170, 174. 111 112 113 114 58