declaration of women's rights and the female citizen

The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfil the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.

He constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. In 1872, Justice Bradley of the United States Supreme Court, in a case denying women the right to practice law, declared in an infamous concurring opinion that: In other words, it tells the story of the relevance of constitutionalism for women’s citizenship as defined in male terms (that is to say, with a focus on equal rights and participation in the so-called public sphere), as well as for women’s ability to redefine the very understanding of citizenship to include participation in social reproduction, in and through the so-called domestic sphere. In so doing, the article takes into account not only women’s access to the rights first conquered by men but also the extent to which the forms of participation traditionally assigned to women-neither in the state nor in the marketplace, but rather in the household and in the family-have become recognized as forms of citizenship contribution. This article is an attempt to explain the forms in which constitutionalism has facilitated or hindered women’s equal citizenship throughout history and with a particular emphasis on Western constitutionalism, especially the US and continental Europe, but also with an eye on new constitutionalism and its innovations.

Declaration of women's rights and the female citizen