Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has conceded defeat in a vote on two constitutional amendments to expand the role of the family in a woman’s life, Fox News reports.
The referendum was a chance to do away with “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women,” according to Varadkar.
The first of the constitutional amendments asks citizens to expand the definition of family from marriage to include ” durable relationships” such as cohabiting couples and their children. The second amendment replaces language on the role of the mother with “duties in the home” in an attempt to recognise the presence of caregivers.
Siobhán Mullally, a law professor and director of the Irish Center for Human Rights at the University of Galway, said that the referendum was a “missed opportunity” to provide a more-comprehensive definition of caretakers.
“It was a hugely missed opportunity,” Mullally said. “Most people certainly want that sexist language removed from the constitution. There’s been calls for that for years, and it’s taken so long to have a referendum on it. But they proposed replacing it with this very limited, weak provision on care.”
Despite this, opponents of the constitutional amendments argued that the concept of “durable relationship” was undefined and confusing and that women and mothers were being “cancelled” from the constitution.
“There’s a worry there that they’re removing the burden on the state to take care of families,” Caoimhe Doyle, a doctoral student, said.
The proposed amendments come at a time when Ireland is gradually transforming from a conservative Catholic country to an increasingly socially liberal society. The proportion of residents who are Catholic has fallen from 94.9 percent in 1961 to 69 percent in 2022. The country of 5.3 million people decided to abolish constitutional restrictions on same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
