Last Friday, Ireland put to vote that portion of the 1937 Constitution that describes the place of women in society. Article 41.2 states two things. First, that the State recognises how "by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved". And second, that "mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home". The referendum was scheduled on March 8, which is International Women's Day.

Cornered

The man who played a key role in introducing the 1937 Constitution was Eamon de Valera, who also founded the Fianna Fail party. In 1936, when the Constitution was being redrafted, there was a lot of concern among women’s groups and for reasons all too obvious. The 1927 Juries Act made it difficult for women to sit on juries. The 1929 Censorship of Publications Bill prohibited advertisement of contraceptives. Women were paid lower salary and pension rates. Mary Kettle, who had consistently fought for the rights of women, said of the marriage bar in Ireland’s civil service: "women from their entry until they reach the ages of 45 or 50 are looked on as if they were loitering with intent to commit a felony --- the felony in this case being marriage"

Nari Shakti

It took the Joint Committee of Women's Societies and Social Workers, which was concerned about women’s representation in the Senate, six months to get an audience with De Valera. Journalist Gertrude Gaffney said in response to the draft Constitution in her 1937 column in the Irish Independent: “He [de Valera] dislikes and distrusts us as a sex and his aim ever since he came into office has been to put us into what he considers is our place and keep us there.” And what according to him was their role? As he himself said in a radio address to the nation about the Ireland of his dreams on St Patrick’s Day, 1943: “... a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens...” Incidentally, De Valera's mother Catherine Coll had been a nurse, while his wife Sinead was a mathematics teacher by training and also wrote books for children. His youngest daughter Sile de Valera was a politician and held ministerial posts.