Women, Gender, and the Revocation of Citizenship in the United States

Abstract

Taking away citizenship, as an extreme measure, defines its boundaries by specifying acts that are deemed nationally desirable and undesirable. The history of expatriation in the United States serves as a case study for the interaction between gender and the limits of modern citizenship status. Citizenship laws and mechanisms of revocation in the United States were explicitly patriarchal until 1922; until then, women lost their citizenship on marriage to a foreign citizen. The laws regarding revocation of citizenship have continued to target prototypically masculine behaviors, particularly those bearing on the military defense of the state. Since the 1920s moment, women in the United States exist in a contradictory citizenship regime: paradoxically endowed with relative immunity from certain forms of regulation and punishment as their status as active political individuals remains a site of struggle.

Gender and Women’s Citizens Rights

“…The laws and regulations regarding the age of marriage for women are so small that they deprive girls of their right to obtain various access to their future. This is confirmed by Prokhovnik Shklar Somers that the concept of citizenship is not only related to the rights and obligations inherent in citizens, but citizenship also deals with various forms of social, moral, non-instrumental relations between citizens and the state or among fellow citizens [4].…”

“…The state should be present as a guarantor for equal rights without any restrictions on any basis for each of its citizens. Herzog and Adams state that policies issued by the welfare state should have a broader perspective in understanding the relationships and boundaries between public and private spheres and institutionally provide an equivalent definition of masculinity and femininity [4].…”