Maria Steen
Last week, RTÉ published a video explaining the forthcoming March 8 referendum. It began with black and white imagery of women engaged in menial housekeeping tasks, while the female narrator stated: “Can you imagine a time when Irish family meant a woman having to give up her job to stay at home and mind the children and other domestic chores while the husband or father went out to work?” The phrasing was clunky, but the implication clear: that Article 41.2 of the Constitution was an instrument of oppression. But did this provision force married women out of the workplace? Does it continue to tether us to the kitchen sink?
The marriage bar was a reality in Ireland; it obliged women who worked in the civil service to retire once married. However, it was in place long before the Constitution, and similar laws existed in the UK (which has no written constitution), the Netherlands, Germany, the US, Canada, and Australia. In other words, it was a widespread cultural phenomenon in non-Catholic countries. RTE’s predictable implicit claim that it was caused or copper-fastened by Article 41.2, or Catholic social teaching, is bogus at best, and misinformation at worst.
Effects
What have been the effects of Article 41.2? Have women and mothers remained embedded exclusively within the domestic sphere? The suggestion is, frankly, preposterous. We have had two female presidents, a female chief justice, a female Garda commissioner, many female Ministers; there is no evidence that women have been inhibited from achieving the top positions in the country. In fact, the Constitution twice refers to women and their rights as workers.
Women have scaled the heights in their careers. They even outperform their male counterparts in school and university. But is there something valuable in our Constitution as it stands, or is it, as the Government suggests, “sexist” and “outdated”?
Article 41.2 recognises the valuable work that women continue to do in the home. The truth is that, given the choice, and despite decades of social conditioning to the contrary, women remain stubbornly interested in domesticity, even down to the finer details that leave most men scratching their heads. Those who are mothers choose to work fewer hours outside the home than men. It seems to me that a provision in our basic law that recognises this fact is anything but “outdated”.
The selfless work that women perform in their homes, the countless hours spent serving their families, and the incomparable motherly love they pour out on their children, are worthy of respect and gratitude. Article 41.2 gives them official acknowledgment and recognition, and exhorts the State to support mothers in their desire to spend more time at home with their children.
A Government that was really intent on supporting what women want would do well to consider the data from the OECD and CSO, which show the different working habits of men and women. Women change their work practices completely once they have children. A poll taken by the Iona Institute in 2016 found that only 17% of mothers of dependent children actually wanted to work full-time outside the home, while a survey of 3,000 mothers a year later by the Irish Independent and Sudocrem found that only 6% wanted to work full-time outside the home.
While the feminists and women’s right’s campaigners say that the thoughts, priorities, and desires of women have changed since the coming into force of the Constitution, the reality is that the thoughts, priorities, and desires of babies have not changed at all. An article by Green Senator Pauline O’Reilly in 2017 in The Journal.ie recounted how then-Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, commissioned a survey which found that only 1% of children wished to be cared for in a childcare setting: 99% wanted to be at home. Most ordinary women recognise this. We know it when our babies look at us. We also know that their babyhood and childhood is incredibly short-lived. While it lasts, many women would like to have the opportunity to give their attention to their own babies and raise them, without feeling that they have to return to paid employment just to put bread on the table.
Relic
It seems likely that the powers-that-be within RTÉ consider Article 41.2 a relic of a past to be remembered only so that it may be deplored. In other words, it must go. It also seems likely that this sort of bias may have skewed the coverage in the broadcaster’s explanatory video. However, there are those of us who believe that it continues to serve an important function, still necessary in our contemporary culture, of holding the Government to account to support mothers, and paying tribute to the women whose selfless efforts on behalf of their families hold the fraying fabric of our society together with gentle bonds woven by love. Gratitude is never an anachronism. Those who value mothers and home should vote no.