Contenu du sommaire : Le genre de la nation

Napoleonic officials transformed and limited the importance of Frenchnationality for women. This transformation is particularly visible in the application of the acts of 1811 concerning the loss of French nationality, as well as the practices of naturalisation and of « admission a domicile ». In each of these cases, one notes that gender plays a determining role in the granting of nationality rights, or contrary to what one had generally thought, there is a real break not just with the practices of the Old Regime but also with those of the Revolution. The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that, if there was a rupture between the two politics, revolutionary and napoleonic, the second was nonetheless the heir of the first.

Education for colonized women was a question long discussed in the French colonies, particularly in Islamic countries. The Ecole Millet, founded in 1900 in Tunis, was the first non missionary institution offering a modern curriculum for indigenous girls in French North Africa. But education is never an innocent business. In this article, I present four hypotheses. first is methodological in nature and suggests that investigation of a modest institution for muslims can serve as a point of access for the problematics of women and gender, nation state and empire. Secondly, the article treats education in Tunisia as a stake in state level conflicts, or rather a stake in competition among several nation states. These conflicts produced debate not only concerning the role of women in muslim societies under French control, but also concerning the obligation of metropolitant French women towards the empire. Also suggested is the idea that some French colonies were used as laboratories in which social reform programs could be tried out. Finally, if French expatriate women were given new roles in the overseas territories, sometimes they themselves took advantage of the colonial situation to create opportunities not available in the metropole.

The purpose of this article is to show how the mobilization of women occurred, during the Second World War, on the side of the « France libre » and the Resistance ; which led to the joining of thousands of French women into the fighting sphere. Even if this has remained a minority phenomenon, and has been considered a transgression by many people, it acquires a significant meaning as regards the mixing of genders generated by total wars.It also represents a significant step in the building of the feminine citizenship, in France.

Gender in French overseas territories has always been constructed differently that in metropolitan France. Whether it be under slavery (1635-1848) or during the periods of colonial (1848-1938) or Bismarkian (1938-1963) citizenship, the European model of the male breadwinner was not applied nor was the continued existence of a polygamous model recognized. The passage from social parity to social equality is thus incomplete for the poorest members of society and notably for single-parent beneficiaries of family allowances.

This article examines the gendering of citizenship and rights in Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1945. In 1918, the new, democratic Czechoslovak Republic declared itself dedicated to equality, including equality between men and women. Women were granted a host of new rights, most importantly suffrage, and proclaimed to be equal citizens. However, it soon became clear that ‘equal citizenship' applied only to politics; gender remained an important factor in determining women's rights of personhood and civil status. Thus, although women were citizens of a sort, they were « women » first, with their rights contingent on what was deemed socially appropriate for the female sex. Because women's rights in Czechoslovakia were fundamentally gendered, they were always precarious, liable to change as beliefs about what was suitable for women changed. This became graphically clear in 1939, when women's right to political participation was revoked because politics had become « too dangerous » for females.

The tendency for abstract theorists of democratization to overlook gender dynamics is perhaps exacerbated in the South African case, where racial inequality is obviously key. Yet attention to the processes through which South African activists inserted gender issues into discussions about how to construct new institutions provides an unusual prism through which to explore the gendered character of citizenship. After providing an explanation for the unusual prominence of gender concerns in South African democratization, the article argues that during the drawn-out democratic transition, South African activists, often influenced by international feminist discussions, developed a collective definition of gender interests and began to build those interests the structure of democratic institutions, in ways that will affect politics and the definition of « women's interests » in the future.

This article explores the gendered relationship between social visibility and nation formation. Defining « social visibility » as the recognition of an individual (or collectivity) as a member of the nation with the ability to impact social/cultural boundaries, it analyzes one moment in which men previously excluded from the nation's fold by class and physical location were formally recognized by the Mexican state. The venue for such recognition was the Bracero Program, the 1942-1964 binational program that brought Mexicans to work in US agricultural fields. The article examines how, through a highly-gendered Program spectacle, the Mexican government symbolically extended to these men (the illusion of) inclusion, recognition, and privileges.

Before being charged with lese majeste Kaneko Fumiko (1903-1926) found common cause with Korean nihilists in Japan. Then, like her Korean lover and co-defendant, she continued to speak out against Japanese colonial abuses. For other reasons, too, it is easy to see why Kaneko's political stand has been constructed in terms of « self-sacrifice for her man ». How else to explain a Japanese woman's apparent martyrdom for him and Korea, if not by reference to her essential femininity ? But perhaps her admirers hadn't been listening to what Kaneko herself had said – thus effecting a « colonization » of the (« egoistic ») subject-position she had carved out for herself. If so, she constitutes a paradoxical case, for the colonization in question was of a Japanese woman whose efforts to empower her Self, without subordinating it to the goals of others, were effaced in the service of a national liberation struggle defined in androcentric terms.