Civil society and civic engagement have increasingly become topics of discussion at the national and international level. The editors of this volume ask, does the concept of “civil society” include gender equality and gender justice? Or, to frame the question differently, is civil society a feminist concept? Conversely, does feminism need the concept of civil society?

This important volume offers both a revised gendered history of civil society and a program for making it more egalitarian in the future. An interdisciplinary group of internationally known authors investigates the relationship between public and private in the discourses and practices of civil societies; the significance of the family for the project of civil society; the relation between civil society, the state, and different forms of citizenship; and the complex connection between civil society, gendered forms of protest and nongovernmental movements. While often critical of historical instantiations of civil society, all the authors nonetheless take seriously the potential inherent in civil society, particularly as it comes to influence global politics. They demand, however, an expansion of both the concept and project of civil society in order to make its political opportunities available to all.

Civil society and civic engagement have increasingly become topics of discussion at the national and international level. The editors of this volume ask, does the concept of “civil society” include gender equality and gender justice? Or, to frame the question differently, is civil society a feminist concept? Conversely, does feminism need the concept of civil society?

This important volume offers both a revised gendered history of civil society and a program for making it more egalitarian in the future. An interdisciplinary group of internationally known authors investigates the relationship between public and private in the discourses and practices of civil societies; the significance of the family for the project of civil society; the relation between civil society, the state, and different forms of citizenship; and the complex connection between civil society, gendered forms of protest and nongovernmental movements. While often critical of historical instantiations of civil society, all the authors nonetheless take seriously the potential inherent in civil society, particularly as it comes to influence global politics. They demand, however, an expansion of both the concept and project of civil society in order to make its political opportunities available to all.

Acknowledgements
Editors’ Preface

Introduction: Gendering Civil Society
The editors

PART I: RETHINKING CIVIL SOCIETY AND GENDER JUSTICE

Chapter 1. Civil Society Gendered: Rethinking Theories and Practices
Karen Hagemann

Chapter 2. Dilemmas of Gender Justice: Gendering Equity, Justice and Recognition
Regina Wecker

PART II: EARLY CIVIL SOCIETIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Chapter 3. The Progress of “Civilization”: Women, Gender, and Enlightened Perspectives on Civil Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Jane Rendall

Chapter 4. The City and the Citoyenne : Associational Culture and Female Civic Virtues in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Gisela Mettele

Chapter 5. Feminists Campaign in “Public Space”: Civil Society, Gender Justice, and the History of European Feminisms
Karen Offen

PART III: CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE FAMILY

Chapter 6. The Family – A Core Institution of Civil Society: A Perspective on the Middle Classes in Imperial Germany
Gunilla Budde

Chapter 7. Veiled Associations: The Muslim Middle Class, the Family and the Colonial State in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India
Margrit Pernau

Chapter 8. “Only Connect”: Family, Gender and Civil Society in Twentieth-Century Europe and North America
Paul Ginsborg

PART IV: CIVIL SOCIETY, GENDERED PROTEST, AND NONGOVERNMENTAL MOVEMENTS

Chapter 9. Necessary Confrontations: Gender, Civil Society, and the Politics of Food in Eighteenth- to Twentieth-Century Germany
Manfred Gailus

Chapter 10. “Good” vs. “Militant” Citizens: Masculinity, Class Protest, and the “Civil” Public in Britain between 1867 and 1939
Sonya O. Rose

Chapter 11. Civil Society in a New Key? Feminist and Alternative Groups in 1970s West Germany
Belinda Davis

Chapter 12. Civil Society-by-Design: Emerging Capitalisms, Essentialist Feminism and Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe
Kristen R. Ghodsee

PART V: CIVIL SOCIETY, THE STATE, AND CITIZENSHIP

Chapter 13. Gender and the Paradoxes of Social Provision: From Civil Society to Welfare State
Sonya Michel

Chapter 14. Fellow Feeling: A Transnational Perspective on Conceptions of Civil Society and Citizenship in “White Men's Countries,” 1890-1910
Marilyn Lake

Chapter 15. Bringing the State Back In: Civil Society, Women's Movements and the State
Birgit Sauer

Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index