When Irish citizens became the first in the world to vote for same-sex marriage in 2015, the constitutional referendum was accompanied by a grassroots roar that sent ripples across the globe. Three years later, the shackles of Catholic Ireland were further rattled when Mná na hÉireann (the women of Ireland) galvanised an overwhelming majority to overturn our constitutional ban on abortion.
The pièce de résistance would be the deletion of article 41.2, the antiquated provision in the Irish constitution that says the state shall 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 “women in the home” provision, a gross form of paternalistic gender stereotyping, has long been a target for reformers, not least because the article – which acknowledges that the “common good” can’t be achieved without women’s work in the home – achieved nothing of the sort.
Article 41.2 didn’t assign women to domestic duties, nor did it exclude women from working outside the home. But it cast a long pall over social and economic policy, as well as calcifying negative societal attitudes towards women through phenomena such as the egregious marriage bar (which until 1973, required single women in certain jobs to resign on marrying), as well as the long tail of gender-based violence.
The majority of progressive leaps for women in Ireland were achieved through waves of feminist activism, strategic litigation and, critically, groundbreaking legislation secured largely through our membership of the European Union.
Deleting the women in the home provision should be a no-brainer. Instead, we are now facing not one but two referendums on 8 March that many women fear are tokenistic and will be as useful to the causes of gender equality and caregiving as an ashtray on a motorbike. That the referendums are being held on International Women’s Day only adds to a sense of grievance about the timing and substance of the proposed polls, whose primary deficits are an alarming lack of clarity about what, if anything, they will achieve.
In one referendum, the government plans to extend the definition of “family” in the constitution. Instead of being defined as the family based on marriage, the state will recognise the family, whether based on marriage or “other durable relationships”.
This poll has been billed as a long overdue catch-up to the modern reality of diverse types of family life, extending the protection of the constitution to non-marital families. Vocal opponents have claimed, in somewhat histrionic terms, that the term “other durable relationships” will open the door to polygamy and “throuples”. Others warn of an increase in people seeking reunification with family who have migrated to or been granted asylum in Ireland.
The spectre of “unintended consequences” looms large over both polls. In the second referendum, the government proposes to delete the women in the home article and replace it with an amendment that deals with “care”.
This gender-neutral amendment would commit the state to recognise that the provision of care by members of a family to one another gives to society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved and “shall strive to support such provision”.
But “strive” falls short of the recommendations of Ireland’s citizens’ assembly on gender equality, which backed extending constitutional protection to non-marital families and the deletion of the women in the home article. For its part, the assembly wanted the article deleted but replaced by non-gender-specific language obliging the state to take reasonable measures to support care within the home and wider community.
With limited resources, you can’t blame the state for not wanting to be held hostage to a constitutional (as opposed to a moral) obligation to uphold socioeconomic rights such as health, education, housing or support for carers, the vast majority of whom are women. Nor do unelected judges want to direct social and fiscal policy from the bench.
But the deviation from the citizens’ assembly recommendations has rankled with exhausted carers who are buckling under the strain of looking after their loved ones and care workers on low remuneration who may themselves have no sick pay or pensions.
So too has the timing. This is because the referendums will be held on 8 March, mere weeks before the supreme court hears an appeal involving the existing woman in the home clause, which the court says raises issues of “systemic importance” to carers. Conspiracy theorists sense a move by the government to beat the proverbial docket by rendering moot a fresh analysis by the country’s highest court of the state’s obligation towards carers and women in the home.
Many civil society organisations, vital to the success of the marriage and abortion referendums – and dependent on the state for funding – have launched well-meaning, if anaemic, #VoteYesYes campaigns for the International Women’s Day showdown.
#VoteNoNo, meanwhile, is composed of an eclectic group of sincere opponents as well as a small number intent on using the referendums to animate culture wars about migration and transgender rights. Others protest that although the language of 41.2 is outdated, it acknowledges the priceless and often thankless task of women in the home, without which society couldn’t function.
As it turned out, it didn’t really acknowledge it. But therein lies the rub: care is intrinsically gendered. The state simply can’t function without the economic contribution of women, who make up 98% of full-time carers and 80% of paid carers in Ireland. There is a significant and persistent imbalance in Ireland between men and women when it comes to paid work, unpaid work and caring. On average, women spend double the time of men on caring and more than twice as much time on housework, while a substantial caring gap persists even among men and women doing the same amount of paid work.
Removing an archaic reference to women in the home, recognising the role of carers and embracing the reality of modern family life are important aspirations. And a constitutional something is better than nothing. For those reasons, the referendums are likely to pass, albeit with a whimper rather than a bang.
But they are no substitute for the comprehensive structural, cultural, economic and legal changes needed to value unpaid care work, tackle gender inequality in the labour market and drive deep societal shifts that lead to less misogyny and more male participation in caring and housework.
Maybe Irish women need to stage a sex strike or an Icelandic-style kvennafrí, or women’s day off, to change history once again. As ever, we are reminded that a woman’s work is never done and that the fight for equality begins behind our front doors.
Dearbhail McDonald is an Irish journalist and author
