"Feminism grasped the reality that politically, liberal citizenship was derived from a basic distinction drawn between the private and the public, thereby intrinsically excluding women from public life and leaving them unprotected from abuse within the family." (Krishnaraj 2009, 44)The private lives of families are generally seen as just that, private. However if we delve a bit deeper and look instead at the patterns and repeated occurrences within families that make up part of the bigger picture, suddenly the "private" comes into focus as part of the public domain. Gal describes this effect as a recalibration (2002). By bringing the private domain of families into a public perspective, repeated incidences of, for example, abuse can be gathered as a political problem that needs to be addressed on a public level and no longer swept under the carpet as individual private issues. According to Menon, that which is seen as 'personal' needs to be recognized as "...completely submerged in power relations, with significant implications for what is called 'the public'"(2012, p. 35), and is, therefore, 'political'. By understanding the feminist slogan, "The Personal is Political", the intersections between politics in the public sphere and politics in the private sphere become visible.
References
Gal, S 2002, "A Semiotics of the Public/Private Distinction", differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 77-95.
Krishnaraj, M 2009, "Women's Citizenship and the Private-Public Dichotomy", Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 44, no. 17, pp. 43-45.
Menon, N 2012, Seeing Like a Feminist, Zubaan, New Delhi
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