It’s a MAN’s world in the Constitution
THE Irish Constitution is sexist and not fit for purpose, according to new research led by University College Dublin academics.
It found the State’s founding document mentions women just seven times, while men are mentioned 109 times. Incredibly, the word ‘she’ does not appear in the Constitution at all.
The research carried out by UCD – assisted by CeADAR, Ireland’s centre for artificial intelligence (AI) – led the team to conclude the blueprint laid down by Eamon De Valera is ripe for revision.
They found Bunreacht na hÉireann is in need of ‘a sustained make-over’ in more areas than the contentious references to women in the home if it is to meet the test of gender inclusivity.
However, the main political parties will be reluctant to engage in any more constitutional engineering following the recent referendum rout.
Nonetheless, the researchers are calling for more inclusive language to be included in the written document after they used AI and machine-learning tools to reveal the extent to which gender bias is endemic in the text.
The research – carried out by Paula Carroll, an associate professor in UCD’s School of Business, CeADAR researcher Bhawna Singh, and Professor Eleni Mangina of UCD’s School of Computer Science – also found ‘key authoritative words’ were much more closely associated with men and familyorientated words were more associated with women.
Announcing the results, the researchers said they conducted ‘a simple frequency count of gendered terms in the Constitution’ and found that the words he, him, his, man and father appear collectively 109 times. The research found the word ‘his’ alone appeared 63 times.
In contrast, the research found the word ‘her’ appears only twice, the word ‘woman’ three times, and ‘mother’ twice. The word ‘she’ does not appear in the text at all.
In a separate test, the group then counted the document’s 1,283 ‘unique words’ and organised those most often repeated into two separate lists.
They note ‘the authoritative list’ contained words such as successor, genius, chief, command, head, authority and ownership.
A ‘family’ list contained words such as birth, diversity, guardianship, parent, child, and spouse.
Using machine-learning and Natural Language Processing tools, the project leaders ran a
Word Embedded Association Test against the target list of gendered terms. The AI tools then quantified the high level of male gender bias in the document.
CeADAR’s Bhawna Singh said: ‘The fact that the words in the authoritative list were much more closely associated with the male gender just highlights how much of the language in the Irish Constitution is outdated and the need for language in future policy documents to be inclusive.
‘When we have the opportunity to choose words, we should choose the gender-neutral option when we can,’ Mr Singh added.
‘De Valera’s blueprint is ripe for revision’
Study f inds that men are mentioned 109 times while women are referred to just seven times and ‘she’ not at all
‘We should choose the gender-neutral option’
UCD’s Paula Carroll added: ‘The close association between certain words and gender is important to highlight because ultimately that is how humans learn.
‘If the word “president” appears alongside the word “he”, an association is automatically formed.
‘We might hear in the discourse that the Constitution is sexist and biased, but this research quantifies it for the first time,’ she said.
The study also revealed that gender bias is not just to be found in the Constitution.
An earlier study by the authors revealed via machine learning and Natural Language Processing that there was a high level of ‘implicit gender bias in the national energy and climate plans of EU member states’.