Kenneth Nolan

I’ve had 3 pregnancies, 4 children. I have a law degree. And I didn’t know that the Irish constitution gave protection to women and acknowledged the importance and benefit to society of their work in the home. The constitution recognises this important role that only women can play and guarantees that women will not have to go out to work outside the home for economic reasons. My first child had to be left in a crap creche at 12 weeks old because that’s when my statutory maternity benefit ran out and the mortgage had to be paid. I didn’t know back then that the constitution provided protection for me. I shouldn’t have had to leave my tiny, tiny baby with strangers in a creche from 8.45am until 5.15pm, 5 days a week. I did want to work outside the home too - also guaranteed for women and men in the constitution - but not so early, not while my baby was tiny. Indeed, not while I was still recovering from growing and giving birth to a human being. So, I didn’t know that really, I could have had a case against the government because, although my child’s father had a good job, we couldn’t afford to live on 1 wage. No woman I’ve asked knew about this article in the constitution was aware of it until the government, soi disant feminist politicians and supposed women’s rights advocacy groups decided that this article was a big problem for women. And that we needed a referendum on ‘gender equality’ to remove it. It will come as news to the generations of Irish women since the constitution was ratified in 1937 that their incarceration in Magdalene Laundries, the theft of their babies in Mother & Baby homes, their legal rape in marriage, their lack of educational or employment opportunities, or their poverty were all due to this constitutional article acknowledging the value of women’s work in the home. One might think that women’s organisations like @NWCI might want to let every woman in Ireland know that she has this constitutional protection. One might imagine that feminist politicians would be looking for legal changes in line with the constitution. For example, fathers’ salaries being divided at source, social payments to women who are working in the home, separate to child benefit, as an acknowledgement of the fact that women’s work in the home is as valuable to society as their work outside the home. But no, the government and women’s NGOs want this removed and replaced with something ‘gender neutral’. No one can explain to women WHY this article with its admittedly slightly archaic language around ‘duties’ has, all of sudden, become so problematic. In the absence of a valid reason for the removal of this protective article, no woman in Ireland should vote yes in any referendum on it.