The Irish government has announced a national referendum will be held in November to vote on removing a passage from the country”™s constitution that defines a woman’s place as being in the home.
According to a Sky News report, the referendum on Article 41.2 will determine if the Irish people agree to remove the constitutional section that claimed “by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved” and that “mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of their duties in the home”.
The country has conducted 38 referendums to update the constitution, which was written in 1937. In recent years, referendums enabled same-sex marriage and the liberalization of Ireland”™s restrictive abortion laws.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar welcomed the referendum with the hope that it will “amend our constitution to enshrine gender equality and to remove the outmoded reference to ‘women in the home.'”
