Gender, Care and Citizenship

• Main Authors: Huei-jen Tsai, 蔡慧貞
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/17403344926581851725

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 社會福利所 === 94 === At the beginning of twenty-first century, most advance societies have confronted with challenges derived from family deformation, marriage at later age, rising rate of divorce, population aging, and the increasing rate of female employment. Conditioned by these structural factors, not only the need of care expands, but also the efforts of caring run off. This structural gap has changed the existing appearance of caring. The family is no longer the only unit to offer caring and begins to rely on the supply from either market or government. Women are no longer just engaged in caring and house work alone at home, either. These changes strike against traditional arrange of gender order. Meanwhile, this essay deals with the issue of ‘citizenship.’ Taken ‘citizenship’ as the core issue, we review classic, modern and reformed notion of citizenship that have developed so far. For Feminists, however, the notion of ‘citizenship’ is ‘gender-blinded’ and serves as the key to causing the gender order unequal. Traditional citizenship restricts the status within such conditions as military ability, property, rationality, and thereby belonging to the men, the master of the public life. Women are excluded from such conditions and thereby circumscribed in her private domain. T. H. Marshall provided ‘the rights’ as a new aspect, though, but still women’s acquisition of her rights can be derived from her spouse only. With the coming tides of welfare reform, the discourse of citizenship again has redirected toward ‘working responsibility.’ So new “welfare” not only makes male duty to support the family, but also advocates women's responsibility to participate in the labor market. With this new arrangement, it has changed women as the carers in traditional way of care arrangement. Though women are still the carers at home and, new arrangement of care is commercialized gradually, women have become the subject of cheap wage labor by offering care service on the caring market. As a result, we find changing notion of citizenship for the last three century so far, women remain occupy and lock into the role of ‘the persons who care.’ While turning the notion into ‘working responsibility,’ women are further sunk into the conflict between caring responsibility and working responsibility. Now women are confronted with the unprecedented life heavy burden, or so-called ‘double days.’ It is still the task that aims to change citizenship discourse in order to bring up transformation of care arrangement and women's situation. At the end of this essay, we probe into the predicament that troubled by the changing structure of care and citizenship discourse transition, and put forward some the feasible suggestions in the future.