Women and the Irish constitution - sunlight in the Irish Times

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These letters to the editor were published in today’s Irish Times:

Women and the Constitution
What is a woman?

Sir, – Your article “Doubts grow over ‘women in the home’ referendum – concern in Government that campaign could lead to divisive debates” (News, August 28th) provides some hope that the politicians are starting to actually “read the room” rather than simply do the bidding of the NGOs they fund so well.
If the Government or the NGOs actually cared about outdated and sexist language, they would review the Gender Recognition Act, which was implemented in 2015. This Act affords a man a female birth certificate if he promises to “live as” a woman. Nothing could be more offensive.
Having asked many politicians and the National Women’s Council of Ireland, for three years now, how one “lives as” a woman, without any reply, my conclusion is that the way to live as a woman is to be born female. – Yours, etc,
SARAH HOLMES

Sir, – Your article delivers very disappointing news. I am one of thousands of women and men who were looking forward to asking those in favour of making constitutional changes the following question: what is a woman?
The terror that this question generates is astonishing. Politicians are so afraid of it they’ll cancel a referendum to avoid being asked it.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but it is nothing in comparison to the fury of women who understand the biological reality of being female is being erased via legislation. The question remains, and it will be asked in the local and general elections. The answer is simple. A woman is an adult human female. – Yours, etc,
SANDRA ADAMS,

Some background:
Ireland's constitution currently states the following:
1. 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.
2. 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.

A recent citizens’ assembly recommended the article be changed to reflect modern life and the government duly agreed to hold a referendum this November. But insiders are now saying that won’t happen as they haven’t even agreed on wording to replace it because it’s a shitshow nobody wants to touch. It seems the government is only now realising that rather than being an easy win (it is after all a ridiculous article that doesn’t even have any positive impact in the real world) they‘ve accidentally brought the issue of gender and women’s rights to the fore.

Sorry, your posts are entirely impenetrable to me and I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

There's no expectation that they should be home raising children, or caring for dependents, or nursing the old. There is a clear expectation that they should not be prevented from doing those things if they choose to do so. Big difference.

The employment marriage bar in the civil service ended in 1973. (Thanks, EEC!).

I think part of the issue PlanetJanette is that I and many other women don't trust this government to hold our best interests, given how readily they gave away our rights in one fail swoop with the GRA. Quite frankly I smell a rat.

So maybe to you this is a chance to 'correct' the constitution and its' regressive language, but I don't believe that's the true motivation behind this.

I also don't see what the big hurry is for this referendum - there is no real day to day effect on women because of the current wording. So I can't help think that this along with the proposed hate speech legislation tweaking coming up are more ways to uphold the concept of gender in our laws.

PlanetJanette

I don't know where you get that this constitutional right is harmful to woman, though it is obviously exclusionary of single fathers.

It is under the heading 41 The Family

The government have made fluffy statements that the change is about the modern family and the change that has happened in the home.
That the proposed changes are to remove a gendered Article, that mother should be replaced by care givers etc so that grandma and grandda who provide child care and NDN Mary who looks after the OAP should all be recognised.

The government use the word gender not sex.
The goverment introduced 2015 legislation which split sex ( a word used in the constitution) into two legal concepts sex and gender (which one lives as/ in)

The government passed a law which makes the birthing human a man and a father.
That is a little awkward as the mother is the default human with right to care for the child and the consitutional right to seek state support.
How exactly is the birthing father going to register as the father without a mother?
Has the government sorted that little issue when passing the legislation around the rights and duties non-genetic linked parents?

I dont see the government looking to change the States obligation to provide non faith primary schools or to remove the Christian God
But the government will provide benefit for the common good by removing the protections from mothers while passing laws to allow the trading of future citizens.

So here is a so-called feminists problem humans have babies and the social contract is that at least one of the parties involved has a duty to raise that human to be a productive member of the wider community. Some so-called feminists benchmark against men and male values so the formation of a good citizen as a corner stone of the common good has no value as men/fathers were not expected to do that.

Why do you think the constitution only recognises the contributions of women in the home, as opposed to the contributions of all people in the home?

Because of setting the view or expectation that that is women's work.

That is damaging and archaic, and should be removed.

The reason I will vote against the change of the word woman is this: Women wanted it changed for yonks because it was archaic, nobody cared. Now men pretending to be women want it changed and they are rushing it through. Fuck that for a game of soldiers!

You don't need to trust the Government, you just need to look at any proposal and identify its impact.

Removing the article would have absolutely no detrimental impact on women. Rewording the article to encompass all people who work in the home would have absolutely no detrimental impact on women.

Removing it would, however, remove an archaic and misogynistic provision.

I'm also not sure what you mean by 'big hurry'. There has been strong opposition to this provision since the Constitution was enacted - Hannah Sheehy Skeffington was a major critic of it at the time, and there have been numerous reports recommending change or removal over the years, including in the 1996 Constitutional Review.

Not sure a referendum to amend something that people have called for removal for 85 years counts as a 'big hurry'.

You think this change has been prompted by trans people?

Are you serious? That's just not true. This emerged from a Citizens Assembly responding to decades long calls for the provision to be removed.

Keeping something that is harmful to women just to spite trans people is really anti-feminist.

How is it harmful?

Ah here we go...anti-feminist. Nobody is trying to spite trans people, your agenda is showing.

And I would disagree that it's not a 'big hurry', if as you said it's been 85 years or so in the making, then why have the government only paid attention in the last few years, why are they also trying to amend the wording of the hate crime legislation?

Also, not trusting the governments motives makes a huge difference to how I as a female voter perceive their efforts - they have demonstrated over the last few years that prioritising actual women is not something they care about. So why now is this small wording change such a big issue?

You say that removing it would have no detrimental impact - maybe so, but leaving it in doesn't seem to have a detrimental impact either.

For me it is absolutely about trusting the government, every single time. And I don't trust this lot. Anyway, it sounds as though we aren't going to be voting on it any time soon.

If they want to change something in the constitution that has a detrimental effect, give people born in Ireland automatic citizenship rights. That amendment really was disgraceful.

The devaluing of women's contribution in the domestic sphere is part and parcel of patriarchy. Being at home with children is worthless and to suggest otherwise is to be a misogynist. I reject this view. If a woman wants to stay with her children and make her contribution through child-rearing, home-making, brewing, baking, sewing etc and whatever and also perhaps pursue some work of her own e.g. painting, writing, then she should not be told that this is a waste of her talents, her education etc. Anti-women moves have involved suggesting that women who stay at home should repay the cost of their education since they are wasting it - if that idea is not plain misogyny I do not know what is.
It is not feminist to deny that women are mothers and that child-rearing is something that they do and that it is a worthwhile occupation which can be combined with other things a woman might want to do in other spheres. Why should anyone have to be a wage-slave?

That's all fine when it's a choice.

But to be a choice the expectation that it is only women, or even women in particular, that do those tasks needs to be broken down. There is value when any parent is able to stay at home - setting the expectation that that should be the woman has limited women's choices for generations and is a big contributor to the gender pay gap.

I cannot for the life of me see protecting women's right to stay at home to look after their family as misogynist. The only people being discriminated against are men.

I think since they can't agree wording, anyone who thinks there may be something potentially troublesome being attempted has good reason. Also, the NWCI are pushing for it and they are only interested in legal rather than biological women. So rat smelling re introducing the pitiful concept of gender to the constitution is warranted.

If the purpose was to remove a misogynistic anachronism, the solution would be a simple deletion.

The very long version

Imagine the Dail and MickyD pass a law ( the budget ) which removed all public spending. You pay your taxes and it is all invested in a wind farm off the Kerry coast and multi-million euro lifestyles for all Dail members

All the departments below are closed down and the staff shuffled off to the remaining departments.

• Department of Social Protection

So no social welfare net, no unemployment benefit, no sick pay, no maternity pay. no child benefit etc

• Department of Housing

So no subsidised housing, no checks on the quality of housing

• Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth

So no childrens services or support s including no child care funding or checks on the for profit service providers

• Department of Health

So no public health services or medical services everybody is profit making

• Department of Education

So no funding of schools or teaching staff its now all private for profit schooling

• Department of Transport:

So no public subsidy for any form of transportation its all for profit business

And the Civil Courts are only available to who ever can pay the full costs of running a court room for the days needed to hear a case and a Judge starts at 600e a day before you pay for the Court room or staff or your own legal team.

If you are employed you have to pay for everything you need from your net pay
Food, clean water, housing, medical care, child care and the suppliers get to charge what ever they want unless you can afford to go to civil court

If you are unemployed, too old, too sick or not able to keep a job you have no money coming in from the state to act as a safety net.

If you are pregnant you need to keep working before and after the birth and pay the doctor midwife and hospital full cost of what they decide to charge

The father can and has pop off leaving you stranded with no cash because you can not enforce child support without fully funding the court system for each time he stops paying.

You unless you can fund a civil case you can be sacked if you take sick leave or your child is sick or needs to be cared for during work hours

Child neglect is a criminal case and the State can adopt your child away from you.

You come from a long long line of minimum pay working class and have low, well no savings. Both your parents were retired and had relied on the State Pension and now are fed by the local soup kitchen.

You have 2 cute children, a baby of 6 months and a 7 year old and sadly the father died so you are a widow.

You have been sick and were sacked and just afford food but not the school fees and the government is in court to send you to jail and take your children and place them up for adoption

You, a woman and mother and a widow, are standing in front the Judge, do you have any consitutional right which you can raise to stop the government from taking your chlidren?

Because it was written in 1937 and that was the absolute norm back then. It was a way of formally recognising the work that was nearly exclusively done by women at the time. Ireland does have one of the most generous social welfare systems to ever exist. As someone who's husband turned dangerous when I was pregnant, the system here allowed me to leave him and live very comfortably as a sahm for many years. Then paid for me to retrain up to Masters level. I am beyond grateful for it and would sure as hell campaign hard to stop any attempt to remove it from younger women.

Claiming that our constitution has no direct bearing on our laws shows a complete misunderstanding of how constitutional law works. Legislation doesn't come directly from the Constitution, it is guided by it. Both by what is directly written in it and what can be inferred from the meaning of the phrasing based on the understanding of people in 1937 or at the time a particular amendment was made. Modern interpretation of the wording can't be used.

Gript asked Catherine Martin what a woman is, I'm sure you can imagine the comprehensive answer she gave
https://twitter.com/griptmedia/status/1696543857641435371?t=P8bDx1Rt7YeB-MKfQyJI8Q&s=19

So the proposal on the table is that the word woman will be banished.

It's extremely difficult to imagine what factor - other than finding a way to purposefully avoid the "w" word in favour of gender - could be proving so remarkably tricky.

I think its more what they're trying to do about redefining family is difficult than getting rid of the reference to women in the home which is what they're also planning to do with this referendum. Friend in politics said they sent out the potential wording to departments in the civil service to get their take on it (gave them like 1 day or so to respond) and were roundly told this is a terrible idea with a whole host of unintended consequences and now they're up a creek because of what they've promised NGO's this referendum would be

Indeed, what is a family if not by blood or marraige or adoption.
When has a choice and lenght of relationship with a sex partner formed a family unit?
Since 2010 co-habiting sex partners can quailfy to sue for assets and parental rights.

And who remembers the two adult men who were family ("father and son") by choice but were going to marry to be recognised as family in law?

Not found in Article 41.2, no.

There are other relevant provisions, of course. The failure to provide primary schooling would be unconstitutional. Removal of a child for factors well beyond the control of the parent may also well be a breach of the family and childrens' rights articles.

But the womens place in the home Article? No - in the scenario you describe, there is no enforceable right that helps.

I'm afraid it is you who is showing no understanding of constitutional law if you think modern interpretation of the wording cannot be used in interpreting the constitution.

But here's the thing - you might well fight tooth and nail against removing the safety nets that you had access to. But your fight would be a political one, not a legal one. Because Article 41.2 gives you no enforceable right to be a stay at home mother or to have access to do a Masters.

All it does is, as you acknowledge, continue the norm of 1937 that women are expected to do the work in the home into a modern context in which we now know that that expectation is damaging to women - their choices, their career options, their pay levels.