March 8th Irish referendum on mothers in the home

Mansplain! How very dare you, women can be Deans too you know!

That’s not what the Irish constitution says.
But it is how the government sneakily tried to spin it in order to remove rights and status from women and mothers.

Oh, and we don't have an honours system granting people titles, either hereditary or for life.

He's hardly coercing a constitutional change. The man is dead. He was involved in the creation of the Constitution.

The Irish political system is completely different from the UK one.

We have a representative electoral system for our lower chamber of parliament, unlike the UK, and no religious representatives or hereditary members in the upper chamber. And we usually elect our President - again, no hereditary head of State. And out Head of State is not head of an established church, because we don't have an established church.

Then one person's view should not be used to coerce a change in constitution and cost 23 million.

"In my life, X happened, so that is my reason for proposing this as a referendum question"??? X could be anything; you wouldn't accept one person's personal experience to be the driving factor

I expressed myself badly.

The Irish political system has many features of the UK one (unsurprisingly), but it has the advantage of a written constitution. We would be better off in the UK with better political education and understanding and less tribal politics, though we can’t do anything about the constitution. If we do feel the need for referenda, they should be thought through and supervised, properly, with a proper referendum commission to oversee. (It was even unclear whether the recent Brexit referendum was binding or otherwise.)

That would be a more grown up approach.

Hard to see how this is a feminist outcome really. My place is not in the fucking home being some man's skivvy although I was raised by a mother who thought it was. Thank fuck I threw off those shackles in the second wave and thank fuck I don't live in the ROI.

To me it means that, BECAUSE this is your role one way or another (women, let's face it, even if you don't have children you may end up as the carer for parents, in-laws etc much more.disproportinayely from your husband) you are recognised for this and further to this, by doing these roles you are honoured by the Irish state for it.

Damn better than having female caring role and it being ignored by the state or worse expected of you because of your sex.

I'm a woman. Caring is not my biological destiny.

I'd rather share that with men!

To me it means that, BECAUSE this is your role one way or another (women, let's face it, even if you don't have children you may end up as the carer for parents, in-laws etc much more.disproportinayely from your husband) you are recognised for this and further to this, by doing these roles you are honoured by the Irish state for it.

Damn better than having female caring role and it being ignored by the state or worse expected of you because of your sex.

I'm a woman. Caring is not my biological destiny.

I'd rather share that with men!

He wrote the constitution. He didn't coerce any change (seeing as he died the year I did my Leaving cert he'd have found it a challenge).

So two different political systems, so you are saying, while it works in Ireland it should be done in Britain more, even though Britain has a different system? Makes no sense.

Then one person's view should not be used to coerce a change in constitution and cost 23 million.

"In my life, X happened, so that is my reason for proposing this as a referendum question"??? X could be anything; you wouldn't accept one person's personal experience to be the driving factor

"'@Redpencil99 · Today 08:40

In the Treaty of Lisbon the Irish government made them vote again on the same question...sorry if you didn't know that

In the Treaty of Lisbon the Irish electorate made the Irish government and the EU change the wording and include guarantees on the issues that they were unhappy about, and they voted again on that different question.

Sorry if you didn't know that.

No, the opposite. He argued repeatedly that disabled people entitled to family and state support to live independent lives in the community and pushing care into the realm of families only would remove the obligation on the state to support disabled people to direct their own futures.

I can’t help but feel really sad today that the sexist language is still in the Constitution, but at the same time I didn’t vote so have no right - the last minute articles by the disability campaigners made me pause for thought so couldn’t bring myself to in the end.
i definitely take issue with the inference in the Constitution that women have duties in the home and men don’t. It’s not true to say there’s been no progress in this area - I see massive differences between my life and my mums life for example, my dad still expects her to wait on him (and she worked full time out of the home!). I worry that this result will entrench attitudes that a woman has more home duties than a man, and there’s no point denying it. sometimes I feel like I’m the only one fighting this, and it has more potential to adversely affect my life, and my daughters life, than anything to do with, for example, trans rights. There are a lot of quite unpleasant people celebrating this result on X. Still, the suggested wording was terrible - but definitely I’m depressed.

Hard to see how this is a feminist outcome really. My place is not in the fucking home being some man's skivvy although I was raised by a mother who thought it was. Thank fuck I threw off those shackles in the second wave and thank fuck I don't live in the ROI.

In the UK, with its unwritten constitution, increasingly polarised politics and largely politically naive population, referenda are not a good way of going about change.
The situation in Ireland is somewhat different. You can find out about it for yourself.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/elections-and-referenda/types-of-elections-and-referendums/constitutional-referendum-in-ireland/#:~:text=Constitutional%20referendum,-Bunreacht%20na%20hÉireann&text=The%20Constitution%20can%20only%20be,and%2032%20have%20been%20approved.

@Puppalicious I agree that it would have been good if they'd changed 'women' to 'women and men' and extended the right to a life in the home and an acknowledgement that that is important to society to everyone. It would have balanced out the article that states that men and women equally have a right to take paid employment.

That said, mothers have a particular role and it's not a bad thing to see that reflected. We are all influenced by our own childhood experiences, and the author of the constitution possibly felt the lack of his own single mother, unable, for economic reasons, to care for him herself, and forced to send him abroad to his grandmother, than he did the lack of a father.