Vote will remove language demeaning to Irish women

LET’S get real about the second referendum next Friday: it’s about removing language demeaning to women from the Constitution.

The Government is proposing the deletion in its entirety of Article 41.2, which reads: ‘In particular, 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 Controversial: John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop in 1937 to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.’

This article of the Constitution is loaded with sexism and condescension, dictated by Dublin’s Catholic Archbishop in 1937, John Charles McQuaid.

Minister Catherine Martin has been criticised for saying that the Constitution states a woman’s place is in the home, and Electoral Commission chair Judge Marie Baker said she was ‘wrong’ to say that. But nowhere in the Constitution does it refer to men ‘neglecting their duties in the home’.

The problem for some people is that the replacement language for Article 41.2 does not go far enough. The Government has offered a new Article 42B as a replacement, which will say that the State ‘shall strive to’ support care within families. It has argued that the courts can then adjudicate as to whether the State has met the requirements in individual care situations. But this stops short of providing guarantees.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has claimed the care amendment

‘will not provide meaningful legal protection’ to carers.

The Government has said the new article recognises care is a job for men and women, mothers and fathers and extended families ‘by reason of the bonds that exist among them’. And it says it would ‘provide explicit constitutional recognition of the value of care in families’.

What the Government claims is that the referendum places a care obligation on the State to support people with disabilities, children and the elderly, to name just a few, and that this is putting in place an obligation that doesn’t exist now.

It remains to be seen if those who are disappointed that this is not enough will vote against the change in protest. If they do, they may find it is another generation before they get the opportunity to change the existing offending clause about a woman’s place in the home. Which would be the lesser of two evils for those voters?