Women’s Civic Inclusion and the Bill of Rights1 Professor Gretchen Ritter University of Texas at Austin
[email protected] January 2008 (Note to “schmooze” workshop participants, University of Maryland School of Law, March 7 – 8, 2008: For a quick tour of this paper, I recommend that you read the introduction [pp.1-6], skim the section on religion [pp. 9 – 23], and read the conclusion [pp. 30-34].) Prepared for inclusion in Linda C. McClain and Joanna L. Grossman, eds., Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship 1 The author wishes to thank Joanna Grossman, Gary Jacobsohn, Linda McClain, and John Robertson for their excellent comments and suggestions on this essay. 1 The Bill of Rights is often cited as foundation of the American rights conscious culture and as a central instrument in the protection and expansion of liberty and popular sovereignty in the United States. Yet, for women, the Bill of Rights has rarely played a significant role in advancing claims of civic inclusion or public citizenship. Instead, women’s rights advocates have turned primarily to the Fourteenth Amendment in their efforts to bolster women’s individual rights and civic standing under the American constitution. The failure to use the Bill of Rights as a rights claiming instrument for women comes despite the Bill’s role (as suggested by Akhil Reed Amar) in fostering civil society as well as individual rights. This essay reconsiders the problematic relationship of women’s rights advocates to the Bill of Rights and contends that the Bill has served as both an instrument for preserving gender hierarchy and a foundation for claims of public voice for women.