Feminist dialectic of citizenship

Abstract

This paper sets out to review the dilemma of citizenship Wollstonecraft raised in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792. I argue that this dilemma falls into the same trap feminist theory does by proposing two different (and opposed) models of feminism: equality and difference. In this paper I suggest that the two are in fact the same paradox, which in turn refers to the equality-difference binarism that operates by structuring the liberal-patriarchal debate on equity in the social contract. Feminism must climb out of this trap in order to offer a new concept of citizenship in which women do not have to decide between equality and difference, or between justice and care.