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Published as Chapter 12 in Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship, Linda C. McClain & Joanna L. Grossman, eds.
This chapter links the failure of U.S. social citizenship ideals to a broader weakness in U.S. ideas citizenship. To better advance policies of economic equality, U.S. law and politics needs a stronger vision not just of economic equality, but of gender equality and of democracy in general. Feminist scholars have analyzed how ideas about gender help shape the common assumption that the costs of raising and sustaining capable, productive citizens are largely private family responsibilities. But ideas about gender also help to undermine egalitarian economic policy by subtly shaping a vision where civic virtue ironically includes the project of razing citizens: turning democratic citizens into pre-modern subordinates dependent on private power. I use the example of recent tax policy reforms focused on reducing the so-called marriage penalty to show how problematic ideas of gender, anti-citizenship, and economic inequality have become entangled and how these must be reconsidered together to promote a meaningful vision of equal citizenship.
Rights
Publication Date
2009
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City
New York
ISBN
9780521766470
First Page
267
Last Page
288
Keywords
marriage, tax policy, marriage tax, social citizenship, economic inequality, equality, feminist theory, gender, democracy, liberalism, communitarianism, law and economics
Disciplines
Law | Law and Gender | Law and Society
Required Text
This material has been published in Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship edited by Linda C. McClain & Joanna L. Grossman. This version is free to view and download for personal use only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Cambridge University Press 2009.
Recommended Citation
Martha T. McCluskey, Razing the Citizen: Economic Inequality, Gender, and Marriage Tax Reform in Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship 267 (Linda C. McClain & Joanna L. Grossman, eds., Cambridge University Press 2009)