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On
March 8, 2024, International Women’s Day, Ireland
will vote in a referendum to replace the so-called “woman in
the home” clause in the Irish constitution. The sentence
specifies that: “The State recognises that by her life within
the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the
common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore,
endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by
economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their
duties in the home.”
Back
in 1937, when the constitution was passed, the clause may have
had good intentions: to assume that those working in the home
– who at that time tended to be women – should receive support
from the state to compensate them. But the support was not
forthcoming so Ireland’s constitution was encoded with an
effectively useless clause inferring that women
should be at home, rather than working, without even
helping them to do so.
However,
while the willingness to modify the phrase in a referendum is
to be welcomed, the proposed change to a gender-neutral clause
still does not formally commit the state to helping those who
provide care at home – regardless of their gender.
As
one fight to ensure women aren’t confined to private spaces is
well on the way to being won, another to get them better
represented in public spaces is still ongoing after decades of
effort. For centuries, women
only entered museums as spectators or as the naked bodies
depicted in the paintings hanging on the walls, but not as
artists. Progress has been made to increase the female
artistic presence, but still far too slowly.
The
resolution of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh put the focus once
again on the fate of the Armenian people and their cultural
heritage – in
danger one more time. | 
