LEICESTER, United Kingdom – Ireland’s ruling government received a stinging defeat in a referendum to change the country’s constitutional provision that seeks to ensure that mothers should not be obliged to work.
The current so-called “woman in home” clause of the constitution says the Irish state will “endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of their duties in the home".
Supporters of the change to the Constitution wanted to include a new Article 42B, which said the state “recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision".
