Ivana Bacik
Tomorrow.
The Joint Committee on Gender Equality will meet to discuss the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality with Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Roderic O’Gorman.
Committee Cathaoirleach Deputy Ivana Bacik said:
“The focus of tomorrow’s hearing is to concentrate on the recommendations relating to changes to the Constitution and on domestic, sexual and gender based violence.
“Recommendations 1-3 set out that Article 40.1 of the Constitution [‘All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law. This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function‘] should be amended to refer explicitly to gender equality and non-discrimination.
Article 41 of the Constitution [‘The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law’ ] should be amended so that it would protect private and family life, with the protection afforded to the family not limited to the marital family.”
“Assembly members recommended that Article 41.2 of the Constitution [‘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’] should be deleted and replaced with language that is not gender specific and obliges the State to take reasonable measures to support care within the home and wider community.”
“…Assembly members recommended that all Government action to prevent and counter domestic, sexual and gender-based violence should be coordinated by a Cabinet Minister with direct responsibility for implementation of a national strategy.”
