Social citizenship and the question of gender: the suitability and possibilities of a Marshallian framework

Excluding gender from analyses of social citizenship is particularly dangerous for those who would integrate it with territorial politics and public policy. The problem is that Marshall's concepts of equality, especially insofar as other people take them as descriptors of welfare state realities, are relatively blind to gender. This chapter discusses Marshall in light of the citizenship debates about topics such as gender, bringing citizenship debates to the collection. It highlights the difficulties and complexity of working with his concept of equality in practical and theoretical terms, as well as its political power as a framework. The chapter also identifies the importance of understanding the concrete meaning of social citizenship and its relationship to lived experience. A very attractive standard of citizenship might turn out to mean little in practice, and an island of egalitarian social policy might turn out to be deeply inegalitarian.