- Ireland commemorated its international women day on Wednesday in a rather unusual way, where it announced plans to stage a referendum that will see the law granting women a special consideration in the government discontinued.
- The country which has a great religious rooting has in the recent years undergone great revolutions including discarding bans that barred abortion and same sex marriages.
- While the law granting women the special reference has remained intact, the country hopes to slash it off in November once the referendum is staged.
Ireland marked the international women’s day yesterday through a controversial declaration, that involved plans to hold a referendum in November to discontinue references to a woman’s place being in the home from its constitution, the government disclosed on Wednesday.
For quite some time now, the country once a deeply Catholic nation has seen it’s decades-old constitution undergo multiple revisions in bid to favor the age of modernity by discarding bans on same sex marriages and abortion. However the outmoded references to women role which were also part of the longstanding yet archaic ordinances, remained unscathed.
Also, while any constitutional change in Ireland must be approved by popular vote, the referendums motion to loosen some of the highly restrictive abortion laws and allow same-sex marriage triumphed through an approval by large majorities. However, efforts by the citizen’s assembly; a platform where the common people deliberate on conceivable constitutional modifications, in 2021 suggested that the references be abolished and be replaced with laws on gender-impartiality and non-discriminatory language.
Article 41.2 of the countries constitution which is now earmarked for amendment, declares that the government of Ireland acknowledges that “by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved” and that “mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
“I am pleased to announce that the government plans to hold a referendum to amend our Constitution to enshrine gender equality and to remove the outmoded reference to ‘women in the home,” Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in a statement on Wednesday as the world commemorated International Women’s Day.
“For too long, women and girls have carried a disproportionate share of caring responsibilities, been discriminated against at home and in the workplace, objectified or lived in fear of domestic or gender-based violence.” He added.
The said referendum will mark the countries 39th referendum, after its constitution was written in 1937.
