Ireland has fired the starting gun on two referendums to widen the constitution’s concept of family and the role of women in society.
The Irish Electoral Commission launched an independent information campaign for the twin votes on 8 March, which, if passed, will remove the constitution’s reference to women’s “duties in the home”.
Marie Baker, a supreme court judge who chairs the commission, expressed hope on Thursday that people would study and debate the issues.
“The worst thing that could happen is that nobody cares about this,” she told a press conference. “I would say everybody should care about what’s in the constitution. Everybody should care as to what it says. And everybody should care as to what they think about it.”
The government has cast the referendums, to be held on International Women’s Day, as an opportunity to embed inclusivity and equality in a constitution dating from 1937.
Voters will be asked whether they wish to delete article 41.2, which reads: “The state recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.
“The state shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
The government has argued the language is outdated. “A woman’s place is wherever she wants it to be, whether that is in the workforce, in education, or in the home,” said the equality minister, Roderic O’Gorman.
The other referendum would expand a reference to family by adding “whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships”. The existing wording offers constitutional protection only to married families. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Ireland since 16 November 2015.
An eight-page booklet to be sent to 2.3m homes, states that a “durable” relationship means “a family based on different types of committed and continuing relationships other than marriage”.
At the campaign launch, Baker said one indicator of durability was treatment by other people. “Are you invited as a couple to weddings? Do people send your postcards, Christmas cards to both of you? These are indicators of your commitment to one another.”
The referendums were recommended by a citizens’ assembly on gender equality in 2021. Despite misgiving about the wording, Sinn Féin, the main opposition party, has signalled it will join other opposition parties in calling for a yes vote in both referendums.
The National Women’s Council is also calling for yes votes, saying “sexist, stereotypical language has no place in our constitution and is representative of a time when women were treated like second-class citizens”.
