Until recently, the (liberal/social liberal)
vocabulary of rights has dominated modern
Western citizenship discourses. It is a vocabulary
that women have used in their struggle
for equal citizenship with men in the civil,
political and social spheres. They have also
deployed it, since the late twentieth century,
to frame claims for reproductive and bodily
autonomy. Analytically, both historical and
cross-national feminist analysis has demonstrated
that a gendered analysis of women’s
role, as providers, users and shapers of
welfare, is crucial to understanding the
development and nature of social rights in
different welfare regimes (see, for instance
Bock and Thane, 1991; Lewis, 2000; Lister,
2000; Misra and Akins, 1998). The importance
of these social rights to women, in
weakening the hold of private patriarchal
power and in strengthening women’s position
as political citizens, has been underlined
by feminist commentators such as Wendy
Sarvasy (1997) and Anna Yeatman (1994).