Women and Children’s Rights organisation The Countess has launched its VOTE NO referendum campaign.
Referring to the Irish tradition of Nollaig na mBán or Women’s Christmas, Countess Founder and CEO Laoise de Brún BL said that this “ancient custom may feel old-fashioned but, as with article 41.2 of our 1937 Constitution, it is, at least an honest and welcome acknowledgement of the often thankless but profoundly important work women do in the home in the running of household and rearing of children,”
She added that this “is the foundation of society.”
We are launching our VOTE NO referendum campaign.
We view Article 41.2 as explicit recognition of the contribution of women and mothers to society for the profound and important work that they do.
Mothers and the work they do should be valued, supported, and celebrated—not… pic.twitter.com/VtSf7oSQua— The Countess (@TheCountessIE) January 18, 2024
de Brún pointed to figures from at home and abroad saying that statistics show that “Irishwomen do double the hours of caring as men and more than double the number of hours of housework. On average an Irishwoman will complete 38.2 hours of unpaid work in the home every week which is like having a full-time job on top of your actual paid full time job as most women work full time. By contrast, Danish women do 16 less a week on housework and caring.” she said
“Across the EU only women in Malta and Romania undertake as much unpaid labour in the home, as Irish women she said, adding that “despite a slight improvement in male take up of unpaid work in the home in and around 2007 this appears to have been a glitch accounted for by the financial crash and the stark imbalance between the sexes resumed once the economy improved.”
“So across the EU we are bottom of the league for equality in the home with Romania and Malta faring about the same.” States de Brún.
“This is the harsh truth and perhaps it is an uncomfortable truth for our politicians whose chief concern would appear to be selling Ireland as the most progressive little country on the world stage.”
Sharply criticising the state failing to “shoulder some of the burden placed on women” she said it instead intends to “recast this reality and propose a sort of gender-neutral diluted wishy-washy ‘caring in the home’ word salad which does nothing to further women’s lot but robs them of their ennobling acknowledgment in an Bunreacht.”
Conceding that she feels language used in Article 41.2 is “outdated”, de Brún said that if one looks to the Irish wording from which the article was translated “it refers to teaglach not home which means household.”
“Any argument that Article 41.2 somehow forces women to stay at home is nonsense and has no basis in law or fact,” she said.
With regard to stay at home mothers and fathers the Countess founder said, “Of those who chose to stay at home to look after their small children in those early years a staggering 94.3 percent are mothers,”
de Brún who is an IBCLC International Board Certified Lactation Consultant added,“No one can argue with the importance of the mother-baby bond and the need not to rupture the mother-baby dyad,”
Criticising how the state treats mothers after giving birth she said “if you are in receipt of jobseekers allowance you must prove to the State you are actively looking for work only eight weeks postpartum lest your benefit be taken away.”
This, said de Brún, sheds light on “the soul of the current government and its actual views on motherhood and the role of mothers,”
“The Taoiseach, Ministers, and NGOs from IHREC to NWCI are clamouring to convince us that it’s the wording that cause the inequality on the ground and in households and seem intoxicated by the mad notion that somehow, by removing those words, we will all suddenly be transported from old fashioned catholic Ireland of the 1950s to some sort of Scandinavian nirvana.” she added.
Describing the proposed change to the Constitution as both “incoherent”, “lazy”, and at attempt at “virtue-signalling” in place of ‘taking action that actually changes things for the better,’ she said that “in reality, Article 41.2 is “a bulwark against neoliberal values which characterise this coalition, whereby all that matters is GDP and the meta economy.”
“Mothering and the running households is done by women and this is explicitly and remarkably recognised for its benefit to all of society under A.14.2.” she said adding that “according to neoliberal economics” these things “hold no value and therefore must be erased.”
She described the ‘neo-liberal’ worldview as seeing mothering as “ disposable, replaceable and worthless because it doesn’t contribute to GDP” saying that it is “downgraded to parent or carer 1 or 2.
”In addition, the contribution of women to society is erased.” she said.
Turning her attention back to the government of Ireland, de Brún warned voters not to forget that it was them who “tried to delete the word “woman” from maternity protection legislation aggressively, retroactively and covertly.”
She says the government “would have gotten away with it too had not the amendments hidden in the depths of the Work Life balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill been spotted by us and inspired our successful campaign These Words Belong To Us forcing a climbdown.”
“We are fighting an ongoing battle with this government to protect our rights and our words. We view this referendum as a narcissistic assault on the foundational legal text of this State and a grave insult to womankind in Ireland.” she said
de Brún warned “We cannot let this vacuous yet authoritarian strain of governance which has infected the anglosphere remove the words woman and home from 41.2 or the explicit recognition of the contribution of women.”
Slamming the decision to hold the referendum in the first place de Brún said it was “an outrageous act of vandalism to our founding document to tamper with it in this fashion,”:
“How dare they.” she said adding that the government had no need to “prove their woke credentials anymore,”
Turning back to the electorate she said, “The people will have their say on March 8 and they will view this ballot as a means to dissent. So many policies have been forced onto the people in the last decade. Now the same zealots are coming for the one clause in our founding legal text that refers to woman or home.”
de Brún expressed her hope that the public will “use their vote to let the government know loud and clear how they feel about the wider issue of hard-left policy being forced onto the citizens without mandate.”
She mused at the timing of the referendum saying it was “curious”
The barrister said it was “interesting” to her that” just as a case is about to come to Court in a leapfrog appeal from the High Court to the Supreme Court that the government might appear to be in a race against the clock to excise the very article that the applicant, a woman who cares for her adult Down Syndrome son might successfully rely upon.”