The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 17 (2006)

Re-Gendering Citizenship in Post 9–11 America

Chieko KITAGAWA OTSURU*I INTRODUCTION
It is generally believed that the United States practices civic nationalism, thus anybody committed to American political belief can become
American citizens in principle. Until the twentieth century, however, thereality of American citizenship remained exclusive and it was only inthe last one hundred years that citizenship crossed over gender and racial
boundaries, thus fulﬁlling the principle of civic nationalism. For minorities, gaining universal suffrage was only one of the ﬁrst steps toward substantiating their citizenship.
One of the obstacles standing before minorities’ exercise of full citizenship is an understanding that in the United States, with its traditionof civic republicanism, citizenship is not just a legal status that guarantees certain rights, but also that it comes with certain civic responsibilities that full citizens are expected to fulﬁll. Citizenship and the
fulﬁllment of civic responsibilities that embody it, however, are deeply
rooted in the traditional value system. Taking a feminist perspective, forexample, Ruth Lister points out that although the ideal citizen is deﬁned
as an abstract, disembodied individual, the ideal of citizenship essentially represents male characteristics. Women, lacking in the characteristics of “citizens,” are thus disqualiﬁed for full citizenship.1
Copyright © 2006 Chieko Kitagawa Otsuru. All rights reserved. This work may
be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of thiswork may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.
*Professor, Kansai University

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Moreover, the most demanding civic responsibilities, namely those of
citizen soldiers, have traditionally been assigned exclusively to men. The
differentiated civic practices between men and women, thus, have long
reproduced the gender boundaries that also prevent women from fully
embodying citizens.2 While men were obliged to bear heavier burdens
as citizens, it is often overlooked in the history of American citizenshipthat women did also engage in civic practices of their own.3
While women had long been excluded from the political sphere, they
did engage in “public” practices in a different “public sphere” than political sphere, or in civil society. Feminist scholars have argued that thepractice of locating the deﬁnitions of “civic engagement” and “citizenship” predominantly in the political sphere, from which women were
excluded, has failed to truly represent the whole picture of civic practices. Such feminist scholars have been working towards a de-genderingof the framework for citizenship in order to truly reﬂect the history of
women’s public activities.
As women gained suffrage close to a century ago and substantiallyadvanced into the political sphere in the latter half of the twentieth century, we naturally expect that such a de-gendering of citizenship has longsince been completed. In particular, the civic responsibilities of soldiers,
which used to symbolize women’s inferiority, have been voluntary forseveral decades and are now open to women as well. However, not only
has women’s status in the political sphere continued to be disadvantaged,
but a recent renewed interest in civil society has also reintroduced thedivision of the political and civil spheres in line with traditional genderedvalues, thus effectively “re-gendering” American citizenship. This situation is being accelerated by the increasing militarization of American
society in the post 9–11 war on terror.
This article examines the gendered nature of the “public sphere”
through an analysis of three cases: attempts to de-gender politics starting in the 1970s, conservative aims in the renewal of civic engagementof the 1990s, and the succeeding call for “citizen service” under the war
on terror. Given the gendered dichotomy not only between politics andcivil society, but within civil society itself (let alone within the politicalsphere), it is necessary to examine the ways in which it might be possible
to prevent the further gendering of American citizenship.

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PERSISTENT GENDERED DICHOTOMY

Just as “citizenship” is deﬁned by the citizens in power, what falls
within the realm of “politics” is deﬁned by those who have control overpolitics. Even after women gained suffrage they continued to play a passive role in politics for several decades, and thus were not in a position
to deﬁne which issues could be considered political. As women havetraditionally been assigned domestic tasks, their daily concerns also centered on domestic issues for much of the twentieth century. These concerns, however, were not included on the political agenda and remained
as “private,” not public, concerns.
Domestic issues that were left out of politics, such as health concerns,
were then taken care of by civil society, in which women were moreengaged than men. This combination of issue, actor, and space createda multi-phased gendering of politics: issues of concern to women tended
to be taken care of by women outside of the formal political process.
Such a division also twisted the perceived relationship between civil andpolitical spaces: instead of looking at these two spaces on equal terms,
we come to regard them as stratiﬁed, with civil society serving the needsof politics.
In the second wave of women’s liberation in the 1970s, American
women started to become actively engaged in politics. The catchphrase“the personal is the political” was used to challenge the existing division
between the public and private realms. They made a point that certain
issues had been excluded from politics not because of their lack of political importance, but because the voices representing these issues were
not heard in the political arena.
One approach women activists adopted in order to include these issues
on the political agenda was to increase the number of female politiciansso as to bring the voices representing these issues directly into political
discussion. Due to several factors such as the incumbency edge and thelack of fundraising network, the increase of female politicians at national
level remained incremental, while more changes were observed at local
levels. Just as electing more women to Congress was hotly discussed in
the early 1990s, the sexual harassment investigation of Clarence Thomas
in the male-only Senate Judiciary Committee took place, which turned
out to symbolize how the deliberation of the legislative process is alsodeﬁned by those who have direct access to politics.

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In the 1992 elections, the coordinated efforts of women activists toelect female politicians resulted in a dramatic increase in the number offemale congressional members. The number of female House members
almost doubled (from 32 to 54) and that of female Senators tripled (fromtwo to six), and 1992 was proclaimed to be “the Year of the Woman.”
The presence of a larger number of female members in Congress, SueThomas argues, helped put underrepresented issues on the political
agenda and introduced new perspectives in discussing issues already on
the agenda.4 Here lies the dilemma, however, in that the process of degendering politics by increasing the presence of women in politics andemphasizing the positive difference women can bring into the politicalprocess can in effect work to reinforce the gendered structure of politics.5
While issues such as education, health, children’s issues, the environment, or poverty ought to be universal concerns, those who are on
the periphery of society suffer more than those in the center, and as suchvoices representing those issues are marginalized in politics. If, in orderto promote the merit of female politicians, feminists put forth the argument that only women, who share the experience of being on the political
periphery, can address these underrepresented concerns, then concerns
which ought to be more fully considered by politicians in general are
made into “women’s issues.” In the same way, if we admit that womenbring into the political process a different standard of judgment or codeof conduct, we end up strengthening the existing gendered dichotomyrather than overcoming it, even though the aim is to reverse the maledominant order.
The increased number of women in politics did not effect changes inthe structure of politics, but rather increased the inﬂuence of female
politicians within the gendered division of labor: female politicians, with
their caring and non-controversial manner, were thought to be better
suited to deal with “women’s issues” than other issues which their malecounterparts had traditionally dealt with, such as national security, foreign policy, or the economy.6
This gender split within the political arena runs parallel to the gendered division of labor in civil society. “Civil society” is a space where
both men and women are voluntarily engaged in civic activities. For along time, however, American civil society functioned as an alternative
political sphere for women. Even after women advanced into politics,
gender difference is observed in the candidates’ recruiting process: while

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male politicians’ previous positions tend to be business/professional,
female politicians’ previous positions tend to be education or housewife.7 McCarthy introduces us to the concept of women’s “parallel
power structure” in civil society that resembles commercial and political arenas of men.8
Given the limited opportunities that existed for women in the political sphere, proportionally more women than men are engaged in public
activities in civil society. But the disproportion between men and women
does not stop at the number. Among civil society activities with varied
nature and purposes, predominant areas women are involved are health,welfare and education, and the way they are involved is mostly as
volunteers. American nonproﬁts developed, in a way, to substitute forlacking government services. In the 1960s, for example, nonproﬁts
increased in large numbers to ﬁll the need created under the Great Society
programs of the Johnson administration. One of the reasons why the government contracted out these programs to nonproﬁts was cost-effectiveness.9 In a sense, predominantly female citizens’ well-intentioned
service replaced the tax money spent on delivering goods and services
to those at the margins of the society. It is ironic that the tax money savedin this way was spent on such areas as war and national security, equipping male-dominated citizen soldiers. What is more, whether the actual
service providers of the nonproﬁt sector were women or men, the natureof its dominant activities, namely caretaking, was regarded as women’s
responsibility, and accelerated the gendering of nonproﬁts as a whole.10
While the political and civil spheres are stratiﬁed to reﬂect the gendered order of American society, the internal structure of the civil society organizations is also gendered. As stated above, activities in civilsociety are mostly staffed by women volunteers, while more men than
women are in management positions in these nonproﬁts.11 Thus civilsociety is just replicating the management style of the rest of the society, rather than introducing a different kind of inter-personal relationship.
Women’s citizenship, thus, did not get de-gendered in the late twentieth century, but the argument women used in the process of politicaladvancement that women have different qualities than men, ironically
kept women’s activities within the framework of gendered dichotomyof “difference” versus “equality.”12 In order to move ahead in the maledominated society, women had to break the existing order even by introducing a reversely gendered value system, meaning that women should

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deserve special, not equal, treatments than men. As such a “reverse”
value system relied on gendered dichotomy in essence, though, the strategy of female political advancement itself fell short of de-gendering citizenship.13
III

GENDER IMPLICATIONS OF CIVIC RENEWAL

As American society directed attention to universal civic engagementin the 1990s, gendered dichotomy of citizenship seemed to be ﬁnallyreplaced by a new, multicultural citizenship. The motivations for promoting civic engagement actually varied among liberals and conservatives across the ideological spectrum. Conservatives, using the samegendered dichotomy women themselves used in their political advancement, expected a larger role from women, given their “different” virtues,
which were thought better suited to civil society activities. Mark Warren,
in his essay discussing the relationship between American religious lifeand democracy, points out that women provide indispensable humanresources for the activities of religious organizations.14 Thus “Civic
Renewal” movements ended up with gendered, rather than gender-neutral implications.
“Democratic deﬁcit” is the term used to characterize the lack of political participation among the general public in many industrialized
nations towards the end of the twentieth century. Those who have theright to participate in politics remain inactive, as if they were “spectators” of the game called politics. While American civil society has historically functioned as the foundation of American democracy, Theda
Skocpol warns that democracy is “diminishing” as more professionalized organizations have become active and large, but faceless members
are reduced to the role of writing checks. In such “diminished” democracy, ordinary people have become less active in “doing” something
together, as Putman points out.15 As America has traditionally cherishedparticipatory democracy, the lack of pro-active, rather than passive, civic
engagement should become the focus of concern. This spectator rather
than participatory democracy is paralleled by the reduced interest in politics, reﬂected in the recent low voting rate and the declining trust in thegovernment.
The early move toward renewing civic engagement was launched bythose in the higher education in 1985 as Campus Compact, formed bycollege presidents to support civic education, community building andRE-GENDERING CITIZENSHIP IN POST 9–11 AMERICA

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campus engagement.16 One of the underlying ideas is that college students who are invested by the society must fulﬁll their social responsibility by paying back to the society with what they have earned.
Especially, since many urban campuses are surrounded by disadvantaged populations of American society, for students to receive higher
education in isolation from the surrounding community equals to beingsocially irresponsible.17
President George H. W. Bush responded to the increasing interest in
civic engagement, and launched an ofﬁce in White House to support
community service in 1989, and started to recognize individual services
in his “Weekly Points of Light” program, the name of which means thatthe good deeds of individuals cover the nation as if lights are lit one byone. In the following year, the National and Community Service Act of1990 (PL101–610) was enacted through Democratic senators’ initiative,
creating the Commission on National and Community Service withpresidential appointees to oversee ﬁnancial and logistical support fornational and community services as well as service-learning programs.
As a Republican addition to the National and Community Service Actof 1990, the Points of Light Foundation was created. The foundation
came to administer volunteer activities, that were commended by the
President’s Weekly Points of Light program.
President Bush’s initiative was succeeded by that of President Clinton,
but more emphasis was put on empowerment of those at the margin of
the society than on individual responsibility. In the ﬁrst year of Clinton’spresidency, the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993
(PL103–82) was enacted. Under this legislation, the Corporation for
National and Community Service was created to support various service
programs. A new addition was that education awards similar to GI beneﬁts were introduced so as to empower the disadvantaged youth whojoined the program, while at the same time strengthening the community through their service activities.
Although serving others is said to be an American tradition, it is rather
new for the government to take part in the activities of civil society as acollaborator. One of the reasons why the consecutive administrations
were committed to the civic engagement was to have the national andcommunity “service,” which is civilian in nature, replace the universal
military service young men used to be engaged in during war time.
Suzanne Mettler argues that one of the reasons why American people
have become self-oriented and less caring to public issues is the lack of172

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common experience for the majority to serve the nation through conscription.18 According to this way of interpreting the development ofcivic engagement, what is important is for every young person to beengaged in national service and to become conscious of publicness. And
that task was assigned to the civil society.
Renewing civil society, however, was supported with different, sometimes contradicting motivations as mentioned above. On the liberal,
reformist side, the meaning of re-generated civic engagement is toempower those who have been marginalized in American society, andthus to take the power away from the privileged. On the conservativeside, civic renewal helps make members of American society more
responsible for themselves, including the poor or immigrants who
depend on the government. Moreover, tracing back the development ofcivil society and appreciating the contribution of religious institutions
and women within the traditional family role, the conservative sideemphasizes the appropriateness of women’s activities in the civil society as opposed to their political advancement.
In 1996, with the funding by the Pew Trust and located at Universityof Maryland, the Commission on National Civic Renewal was launched.
After conducting research for a couple of years, it published its ﬁnal
report called “A Nation of Spectators.”19 Senior bipartisan congressional members co-chaired the Commission, and scholars of various backgrounds contributed to its discussion. Having pointed out the importanceof civil society as the foundation of American democracy, however, theﬁnal report very much reﬂected the opinion of conservatives who regard
American “traditional” moral values coming out of family and religion,
as the indispensable elements in renewing civil society. For example, an
index to show the civic health of Americans, or Index of National Civic
Health, was calculated in such a way that the importance of “traditionalfamily values” and church-related activities is larger than what average
American people might evaluate in their daily life.20
As if rewinding the time back to the nineteenth century, the morality
and virtue of women as caretakers in the family and civil society, but notin the political sphere, were reemphasized through the conservative sideof the civic renewal movement of the 1990s. What is more, by integrating service into the government-led civic renewal efforts in order to promote the sense of public obligation as citizens, there emerged a danger
that activities in civil society cease to be “another path” for individuals
to raise political questions.21 One study shows that this worry turned out

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to be a reality: while many young volunteers saw satisfaction in caretakers’ roles, saying they feel good by doing others good, they did not
feel their role was to connect the problems they face with politics, andthus use their political efﬁcacy in fundamentally solving the problem.22
We can say that despite both men and women participating in the actual caretaking, the whole civil society, in a sense, is de-politicized andgendered under the stratiﬁed division of labor. Such gender implications
became more obvious in the mobilization of civil society for the purposeof ﬁghting terrorism.
IV MOBILIZING CITIZENS FOR THE WAR ON TERROR
1)The Creation of the Citizen Corps

The impact of 9–11 on American civic life was tremendous, and it had
both positive and negative effects for American citizenship. What is clear
is that the government was more interested than ever in using civil society for its political purposes, and civil society was more than ever reconciliatory to such a role. Right after the attack was made, President
George W. Bush claimed that it was an attack on American freedom, and
the American people were determined to defend that freedom.23
In his ﬁrst State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, President
Bush introduced a new program aimed at deepening the commitment of
the American people as citizens of the United States to defend American
free society through their service to the nation.24 This program, named“Freedom Corps” actually combined existing programs with the similar
purposes of community and national service, but naming it “freedom”
was important as Bush characterized the challenge of the terrorists in theprevious year as one posed against American “freedom.” He characterized the program as follows: “One purpose of the USA Freedom Corps
will be homeland security. America needs retired doctors and nurses who
can be mobilized in major emergencies; volunteers to help police andﬁre departments; transportation and utility workers well-trained in spotting danger.”25 President Bush then issued Executive Order 13254, establishing the USA Freedom Corps.26
President Bush asks each American citizen to take 4,000 hours, or two
years, out of his or her entire life for service. But the government’s role
does not stop there. The Bush administration has even set up a system
to match the volunteers seeking opportunities and the tasks in need of

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volunteers online. The Freedom Corps website even includes a page toregister how many hours each person has contributed to voluntary
service, and awards for individuals or corporation are presented to recognize their superb services to the nation and community. All these governmental initiatives are presented to the people in the name of protecting
American freedom.
Under the umbrella of the Freedom Corps, existing service programs
such as the AmeriCorp, Senior Corps, and Peace Corps were integrated,
and the Corporation for National and Community Service continued toadminister the various programs. Among the pillars of Freedom Corps
was a newly established program of “Citizen Corps.” Citizen Corps isdeﬁned as “a grassroots, locally-based effort that is designed to mobilize and train volunteers to respond to acts of terrorism and other emergencies.”27 They are also expected to assist local law enforcement efforts,
so as to remove the extra burden ofﬁcials might have in a time of crisis.
Thus Citizen Corps Council (CCC) is formed at city/county/state levels,and originally four programs were to be run under the CCC: CERT(Community Emergency Response Team), Medical Corps, VIP (Volunteers in Police), and Neighborhood Watch, to which Fire Corps was later
added. These programs were originally jointly administered by Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Justice, andother federal agencies, but as the Department of Homeland Security waslaunched and FEMA came under the jurisdiction of the new department,
the primary responsibility for the Citizen Corps programs was assigned
the Department of Homeland Security.
As of this writing, there are more than 1764 local CCCs and 55
state/territory CCCs, serving communities totaling over 195.6 million
people (approximately 68% of the total US population).28 Some states
have 100-percent coverage by local CCCs, while others have lower coverage, reﬂecting such factors as a sense of vulnerability, social and commercial capital, or the political culture of each community.29
2)

The Gendering of Civic Engagement

Although Citizen Corps was introduced to “strengthen” communities,
the meaning of a “strong community” is differently understood among
different CCCs. In order to understand how local Citizen Corps leadership recognized Bush’s purpose, I conducted a questionnaire-based
study with the coordinators of existing CCCs in six states, namely
California, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, as

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respondents.30 Since the number of responses remained small, I will analyze the data collected qualitatively below.
Since the name “Citizen Corps” was chosen with the political intention
to stimulate a sense of civic responsibility among the American people,
the questionnaire asked about respondents’ understanding or expectation regarding the core qualities of “citizens.” While some answers
referred to legal citizenship status as a core quality, many answers tended
to emphasize residency as community members, including those who are
not legal citizens. One answer speciﬁcally points out the multicultural
nature of its program, saying that “everyone regardless of age/race/religion/creed/nationality” is considered a citizen.31
The majority of CCCs cite qualities of citizens either in terms of attitude or conduct. What is expected in a civic attitude is mutual understanding, such as interest or concern for others and cooperation in thecommunity. Expected conduct listed in the answers include “service tothe community and the nation,” “helping others,” “volunteering and giving back to the community,” or to “consolidate and coordinate skills forsurvival.” Other expected qualities include “value and civic virtue,” suchas “good social standing,” “high value [placed] in home and culture,”“loyalty and commitment to the U.S., freedom and liberties,” “compassion, integrity, morality, and honesty.” One answer lists “serving in the
military” as a qualiﬁcation for being considered a “citizen.” Someanswers add the conditions for becoming a Citizen Corps volunteer, suchas “undergoing a background check,” “[having] no criminal record,” andbeing of “reasonably good health.” These criteria may well be used to
exclude certain community members, even though the intended aim of
the Citizen Corps is strengthening the community.
These differences in understanding are reﬂected in how the actual programs are run. For example, Fresno City CCC, which was one of the ﬁrst
CCCs in the nation to be launched, tried to create a web-like structure
among the public and private organizations, rather than a top-down
stream, so that all of the organizations have contact with each other. The
ideal of strengthening the community is understood by Fresno CCC tomean that no one in the community is left out and that each individual
makes use of his or her own capacity in his or her given place. This understanding is reﬂected in the fact that multiple languages are used in its
VIP program so as to help non-English speakers, mostly the area’s large
Asian population, in the community.32

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Not many CCCs, however, emphasize community building or empowering people as priorities, but rather focus on emergency management.
A typical answer was given by the Headquarters Commander of the State
Guard Reserve of North Carolina, who regards the Citizen Corps program as predominantly a national security matter, and thus he refused toprovide any information on their program to the author, a foreigner. This
type of understanding is not peculiar given the fact that the majority of
CCCs are administered under emergency management agencies and far
fewer are administered under volunteer centers or community service
agencies.
The variation among CCC management systems can be explained by
the multiple tasks Citizen Corps is expected to perform and the priority
given to different tasks, or the means to achieve them, among different
CCCs. The Bush administration’s primary aim for Citizen Corps is toprevent American citizens from becoming “sitting ducks,” vulnerable toanother terrorist attack. The Bush administration’s understanding of“community strengthening” actually refers to “damage control,” notunlike Civil Defense during the Cold War. For example, FEMA characterizes Citizen Corps as Homeland Security’s grassroots program which“localizes Ready’s [Department of Homeland Security program] preparedness messages and provides local opportunities for citizens to get
emergency response training; participate in community exercises; andvolunteer to support local emergency responders.”33
Corresponding to FEMA’s emergency-oriented priority, the Red
Cross and other voluntary organizations supporting Citizen Corps’s
emergency management activities emphasize that spontaneous volunteers cause more harm than good, since they stand in the way and prevent emergency responders from dealing with the situation. Volunteer
centers under Citizen Corps explain that their role in emergencies is actually to keep volunteers away from the site of the damage. It has evenbeen said that the obligation of general citizens is “not to stand in theway.”34
Ironically, the treatment of certain citizens with speciﬁc capacities asassets to society, while treating others as liabilities has been observed
through the Citizen Corps programs even though they call for citizens ingeneral to participate and serve. For example, volunteers in VIP programs do not pursue their own initiatives but rather work as substitutes
doing the routine tasks of the police so as to free the police to deal withmore serious cases. Opportunities for Medical Reserve Corps are even

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more limited to those who have speciﬁc qualiﬁcations. What is more, thetask assigned to Neighborhood Watch volunteers is to survey and identify who within their community “might” be a terrorist, and in most casessuch identiﬁcation can only be made based on racial proﬁling. This isexactly the attitude that the multicultural community building efforts of
the 1990s were trying to reverse.
The same term “community strengthening,” thus, is used differently
by the administration and those who have been involved in community
service. For community activists, it means ﬁrst and foremost strengthening each individual and the mutual relationship among individuals.
Nurturing trust and mutual understanding among the community members, which is the core of civil society, makes for a strong base in timesof crisis.
Opposite to what these community-based organizations aimed for, theemergency-oriented aspect of Citizen Corps is administered from the top
down with the government standing at the top and civil society subordinate to it. The organizational structure of many of the CCCs is based on
two supporting pillars which represent not only division of labor but alsoa gender divide. One pillar is the local emergency agency, which ismainly represented by work considered to be “masculine” and staffed byfull-time government employees. The second pillar is a volunteer center, which is staffed mostly by women who have previous experience as
volunteers. Some CCCs, such as the Ohio State CCC, are even headedby part-time coordinators. Ordinary volunteers constitute the bottom tierof such a hierarchical structure.
The Bush administration claims that since Freedom Corps waslaunched, the number of those who volunteer has surged in the UnitedStates. For example, 64 million people volunteered in 2004, ﬁve million
more than in 2002.35 According to the Labor Department, however,
although the overall number of volunteers increased in the same period,
women volunteered at a higher rate than men across age groups, education levels, and other major characteristics.36
American civil society activities are not identical to Citizen Corps
activities, but the inﬂuence of government funding, such as AmeriCorp’s
budget for colleges, permeates daily civil society activities at the grassroots level. The “hard” side of Citizen Corps activities, establishing themechanism for ﬁghting terrorism, tends to overshadow the “soft” sideof activities, empowering the marginalized people in the community,
resulting in the stratiﬁcation of both the internal structure of civil society

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and the civil society-government relationship. This stratiﬁcation, in turn,overlaps with and reinforces the traditional gendered dichotomy.
V CONCLUSION: RE-GENDERING CITIZENSHIPThe Citizen Corps website formulates the expected role of CCCs as
follows: “With the added support of citizens, emergency service providers have more time to fulﬁll their highly skilled responsibilities.”37
By using such rhetoric, the administration make the public believe thatthe value of citizens depends on how much they can serve the nation intimes of emergency. From the beginning, the emphasis on national service emphasized in civic renewal has had a tendency to make use of civilsociety for policy purposes, and the gendering of civil society under thegovernmental guidance and funding was implied in the program. With
the war on terror and the resulting national priority on the militarized
aspects of civic service, an implied stratiﬁcation emerged categorizing
civic services into “ﬁrst grade” and “second grade.”
Reversing the emphasis on citizen service of the 1990s, minority
youth, predominantly male, are now increasingly approached by recruiters to serve in the military. President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”
educational program actually contains a clause giving military recruiters
access to students, and schools that refuse to provide requested information to the military are not eligible for federal funding.38 Ironically,
the government is sending the message that “citizen” service is lessimportant than “military” service, even in this quite subdued way.
In mobilizing civil society toward the war on terror and asking citizens to engage in service for the safety of nation and community, thegovernment is aiming not to promote social capital among people,
namely the mutual understanding and trust on which civil society arebased,39 but rather to subordinate them under an authorized order notunlike the structure of the military. It is this power relationship that characterizes the re-gendering of citizenship now, not the actual stafﬁng by
men and women. It is true that women are not excluded from emergency
management, and men are involved in caretaking as volunteers in theactivities of the Citizen Corps. However, differentiated value and positioning given to the ﬁghting and caring activities in civil society, and thegovernment’s oversight activities of civil society, reﬂect a genderedstratiﬁcation.
Despite the mixed messages from different groups, the call for civic

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renewal in the 1990s at least presented American society with an opportunity to stop and think about what it means to be a “citizen,” especiallyin a multicultural context. The priority placed on ﬁghting terror and theaccompanying militarism not only reintroduced and legitimized the gendered stratiﬁcation of civic engagement, but also marginalized other elements of multicultural citizenship as well. Now we can only wait for
initiatives at the grassroots level to shift the priority and value back to
the empowering aspect of civil society activities and citizenship.
NOTES
The research on Citizen Corps was conducted under “The State of Political Community in the Global Age,” funded by the 29th Japan Securities Scholarship Foundation
Academic Research Grant.
1
Ruth Lister, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (London: MacMillan, 1997), 66–72.
2
R. Claire Snyder, Citizen-Soldiers and Manly Warriors (London and New York:
Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 1999).
3
Sara Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (New York andLondon, Free Press, 1989), 3–5.
4
Sue Thomas, How Women Legislate (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press), 1994.
5
Thomas introduces a study that female politicians tend to focus on “women’s issues”
as long as they remains small minority, and if female politicians’ ratio exceeds 25%,such intentional focus cease to exist. Ibid., 154.
6
Health/welfare, education, women/children are higher priorities and committee
chairpersonship among female politicians. Ibid., 64.
7Ibid., 45.
8Kathleen D. McCarthy, ed., Women, Philanthropy, and Civil Society (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2001), 1.
9Lester Salamon, Holding the Center: America’s Nonproﬁt Sector at a Crossroads,
trans. Naoto Yamauchi (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1999) [1997].
10
Ronnie J. Steinberg and Jerry A. Jacobs, “Pay Equity in Nonproﬁt Organizations:
Making Women’s Work Visible,” in Women & Power in the Nonproﬁt Sector, ed. Teresa
Odendhal and Michael O’Neill (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994), 90–102.
11
In the 1990s, 75% of workers in nonproﬁt organizations were female, while only
20% of their board members were female. Moreover, more prestigious nonproﬁts had
smaller ratios of female board members. Elsa M. Davidson, “Women’s Philanthropy in
the United States: Trends and Developments,” http://www.philanthropy.org/
publications/online_publications/women_paper.pdf.
12
Lister, Citizenship, 145.
13
Yayo Okano fully discusses the question of this “difference” vs. “equality” dichotomy regarding the feminist citizenship in Chapter 4 of her book, Citizenship as Politics(Tokyo: Hakutakusha, 2003).
14
Mark R. Warren, “Faith Communities and American Democracy,” in One Electorate Under God? A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics, ed. E.J. Dionne, Jr.,
Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Kayla M. Drogosz (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,2004).

180

CHIEKO KITAGAWA OTSURU

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in
American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); Robert Putnam,
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon& Schuster, 2000).
16
Presidents’ Declaration of Civic Responsibility of Higher Education, http://
www.compact.org/presidential/104-Declaration-Web.pdf.
17
The author’s interview with Mary Beth Damm, Assistant Director, Center forCommunity Service and Learning, University of Michigan, July 25, 2001. Dr. Susan E.
Stroud, Executive Director, Innovations in Civic Participation, Global Service Institute,
who was engaged in launching the Campus Compact, emphasizes the spirit of serviceof the original three university presidents and their commitment to show how engaged
students could be useful to the society through the service-learning program. The
author’s interview with Dr. Stroud, September 8, 2005.
18
Suzanne Mettler, “Bringing the State Back In to Civic Engagement; Policy Feedback
Effects of the G. I. Bill for World War II Veterans,” American Political Science Review
96, no. 2 (2002): 351–365.
19
National Commission on Civic Renewal, A Nation of Spectators: How Civic Disengagement Weakens America (College Park, Md., 1998).
20
For example, the health of family is calculated by considering divorce and out-ofwedlock birth, and one of the three indicators for associational health is calculated bychurch attendance. Ibid, 24.
21
Tobi Walker, “A Feminist Challenge to Community Service: A Call to Politicize
Service-Learning,” in The Practice of Change, ed. Barbara J. Balliet and Kerrissa
Heffernan (Washington, D.C.: American Association for Higher Education, 2000),
33–35.
22
Tobi Walker, “The Service/Politics Split: Rethinking Service to Teach Political
Engagement,” PS XXXIII (3) (September 2000): 647–649.
23
George W. Bush, “Remarks following a Meeting with the National Security Team,”
Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, September 12, 2001, p. 1302.
24
George W. Bush, “Address before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of
the Union,” Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, January 29, 2002, 138.
25
Ibid.
26
“Executive Order 13254—Establishing the USA Freedom Corps,” Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, January 29, 2002, 139–141.
27
Citizen Corps homepage, http://www.citizencorps.gov.
28
Based on “Citizen Corps Statistics,” http://www.citizencorps.gov/citizenCorps/
councilmap.do.
29
For example, Hawaii, Maryland and New Jersey are covered 100 percent while only
nine percent of Mississippi population is covered by CCCs (as of August 2005).
30
Questionnaires were sent via e-mail to143 state/county CCCs between October 30
and November 7, 2003, and 28 CCCs responded. The states were selected based on their
CCC coverage ratio as of 2003, except for Texas which is the home state of President
Bush. The ratio later changed as more CCCs were established while some stopped functioning.
31
An answer by Ark-Tex Council, Texas.
32
The author’s interview with Carla Glazebrook, Executive Director, Fresno Citizen
Corps, September 5, 2003. Given the quite conservative nature of Fresno area, the stated understanding of community strengthening may need further observation.
33
FEMA Press Release, June 9, 2005, http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/
display?content=4538.
15

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34

181

Points of Light, “Managing Spontaneous Volunteers in Times of Disaster: The
Synergy of Structure and Good Intentions,” 6, http://www.pointsoﬂight.org/
downloads/pdf/programs/ disaster/brochure.pdf.
35“National Volunteer Week, 2005: A Proclamation by the President of the UnitedStates of America,” April 14, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2005/04/20050414–1.html.
36
Labor Department’s statistics, “Volunteering in the United States, 2004” http://
www.bls.gov/news.release/volun.nr0.htm.
37
Excerpt from “The Role of CCC” of the Citizen Corps website, https://www.
citizencorps.gov/councils/cc_councils/role.shtm.
38
PL107–110, Title IX, Part E, Subpart 2, Section 9528.
39
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Generating Social Capital: Civil Society andInstitution in the Comparative Perspective (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003).