'Sexist and offensive’ – Human rights body Flac won’t be backing changes to ‘woman’s place’ provision in Constitution

The Free Legal Advice Centre (Flac) will not support the upcoming referendum on the so-called “women’s place” amendment.

The independent legal and human rights body has said the new care amendment the Government wants to put in the Constitution would be “as ineffective as the current so-called ‘women in the home’ provision” and claimed the new amendment is “implicitly sexist”.

“It is unlikely to provide carers, people with disabilities or older people with any new enforceable rights or to require the State to provide improved childcare, personal assistance services, supports for independent living, respite care or supports (at home or in school) for children with disabilities,” Flac said in a statement.

The organisation’s position, based on its own legal analysis of the upcoming vote, is that it is “highly regrettable” that the public weren’t given the chance to vote for a straight repeal of the “sexist and offensive” women in the home provision.

Flac said the proposed new care amendment was “implicitly sexist” because it implied that the responsibility to provide care rested with unpaid family members – the majority of whom are women.

It also argued that the fact that the new amendment would perpetrate a “harmful stereotype of people with disabilities as the subjects of family care rather than autonomous individuals and rights-holders.

“The proposed new wording does nothing to enhance (and potentially compromises) the rights of people with disabilities as set out in the the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

While Flac said it supports the referendum on the family, which is being held alongside the care referendum on March 8, it said it will not be actively participating in the current referendum campaigns.

It comes as separately, a poll said the majority of mothers of dependent children in Ireland (69pc) would would prefer to stay at home with their children rather than go out to work if they could afford it.

An Amárach poll commissioned by the conservative think tank the Iona Institute also found that 76pc of mothers said that women who work in the home are undervalued by society, compared with women who work outside the home.

More than 70pc of mothers polled said they do not feel valued by society for their work as mothers.

The research was commissioned ahead of the March 8 referendums.

Professor Patricia Casey, a spokeswoman for the Iona Institute said the findings were “extremely relevant” to the upcoming referendum on carers.

“I have been a working mother for most of my adult life. This is what I wanted and Article 41.2 of the Constitution held me back in no way, shape or form,” she said.

“Children’s Minister, Roderic O’Gorman, says ‘a woman’s place is wherever she wants it to be’, and that is exactly correct. The trouble is the policy of this and past governments has made it almost impossible for most mothers to stay at home with their children if that is what they want,” Ms Casey said.

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