Endorse recognition of caring work and of
pay equity in Irish Constitution
by the Global Women’s Strike, Ireland
Proposed
wording for 41.2.1
The State
recognises caring work done within the home, often extending to the
community, as a social and economic activity that produces social
welfare and economic wealth, and entitles carers, starting with mothers,
to economic and other support.
The State
also recognises that in rural areas caring work has included work on the
land which has kept families and communities alive and strong despite
poverty and emigration.
Proposed
wording 41.2.2
The State
shall therefore ensure that carers, starting with mothers, are not
obliged by economic necessity to engage in waged work
which would increase their workload, and shall provide workers in the
home with independent remuneration and pensions.
Proposed
wording for additional 41.2.3
The State
shall also ensure that women, particularly mothers who do most of the
vital work of caring for children and/or other dependants, or men who do
this caring work, do not suffer discrimination in wages, pensions,
health care and social welfare when they go out to work, and that pay
equity, that is, equal pay for work of equal value, is fully
implemented.
Current wording of article
41.2.1
In particular, 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.
Current
wording of article
41.2.2
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.
Why the proposed changes
Some have called for abolition of Article 41.2 on the
ground that it is sexist. While it is obviously sexist to refer to work
in the home as a woman’s “life” and as her “duty”, it would be even more
sexist to obliterate the only constitutional recognition of unwaged
caring work, done at great personal cost by generations of women and up
to the present day, and its vital contribution to society’s survival and
welfare. Article 41.2 must be reworded to reflect accurately the value
of this work, the skill of the workers who do it and the entitlements it
should earn them, and thus help end the gross discrimination women have
suffered both as workers in the home and workers outside.
The Global Women’s Strike (GWS) – a network with national
co-ordinations in 11 countries, including Ireland, and participating
organisations in over 60 countries - was formed to urge the economic and
social recognition of unwaged caring work. As early as 1952 the GWS’s
international co-ordinator was speaking out to make visible this unwaged
contribution of women.
Unremunerated work entered the international agenda in
1975, at the opening conference of the UN Decade for Women in Mexico
City. The mid-decade conference in 1980 in Copenhagen, Denmark, gave it
additional legitimacy with the International Labour Office (ILO) figure
(conservative in our view) that women do 2/3 of the world’s work, yet
receive only 5% of its income. In 1985 at the final conference of the
UN Decade in Nairobi, Kenya, we won Paragraph 120 which stated that the
work women do in the home, on the land and in the community is to be
included in national statistics. Finally in 1995, in Beijing, China,
the International Women Count Network (co-ordinated by the International
Wages for Housework Campaign which also co-ordinates the GWS), supported
by more than 2,000 organisations worldwide (including from Ireland), won
the decision that national accounts are to include measuring and valuing
unwaged work: how much of their lifetime women (and to a lesser extent
men) spend doing unwaged work and how much value this work creates. It
was a turning point globally.
Trinidad & Tobago was the
first country to put this into law in 1996. Spain followed in 1998.
The Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela went further, enshrining in its 1999 Constitution
the social and economic recognition of unwaged work in the context of
equality and equity between the sexes. Article 88 states:
The State guarantees
equality and equity between men and women in the exercise of their right
to work. The State recognises work in the home as an economic activity
that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth.
Housewives are entitled to social security in accordance with the law.
In March
2005, the GWS organised a European speaking tour for Nora Castañeda,
President of Venezuela’s Women’s Development Bank, and Angélica Alvarez,
the Bank’s promoter in Bolívar state. When speaking about the
importance of Article 88, Ms Castañeda explained that,
“Women are the carers of the species, there is no work
more important than that and society has a debt to women.”
In her weekly radio programme, Ms Castañeda quotes Selma
James, GWS co-ordinator:
Caring
for others is accomplished by a dazzling array of skills in an endless
variety of circumstances. As well as cooking, shopping, cleaning and
laundering, planting, tending and harvesting for others, women comfort
and guide, nurse and teach, arrange and advise, discipline and
encourage, fight for and pacify. This skilled work, which requires
judgement and above all self-discipline and selflessness, is most often
performed within the family. Taxing and exhausting under any
circumstances, this service work, this emotional housework, has an
additional emotional cost when it is done for and on behalf of those
whom the woman is emotionally involved with. But all this is expected
of women by everyone: friends and neighbours, workmates, employers (why
else is the secretary called the 'office wife'?), as well as family;
this emotional work is done both outside and inside the home.
The Global Kitchen, London 1985
Soon after
Ms James added:
We women
are the first to defend and protect those in our care. It goes
unremarked that it is usually women – mothers, wives, partners, sisters,
daughters, grannies and aunties – who are the driving force of justice
campaigns, whether or not we are prominent or even visible in them.
Recognition
of the work that women do in the new Venezuelan Constitution and
Venezuela’s determination to deal with poverty, starting with women (70%
of those living in poverty are women), have led to other anti-sexist
measures such as Article 14 of the Land Act which prioritises
woman-headed households for the redistribution of idle land to those
ready to work it, and the creation of the Women’s Development Bank, a
state micro-credit institution which has distributed 51,000 credits so
far.
Venezuela’s Article 88
has set a new standard for the world, including for Article 41.2 of the
Irish Constitution. We have adapted it to the Irish situation, in the
wording we are proposing for Paragraphs 41.2.1 and 41.2.2, and for an
additional Paragraph 41.2.3.
In rural Ireland caring
work, done mainly by women, has traditionally included making the land
fruitful – tending orchards, gardens and fields, rearing and tending
animals, gathering berries, herbs, etc. For centuries this field and
yard work has helped to keep families and communities alive and strong
in the face of poverty and emigration. Although large numbers of people
have now moved to live in urban areas, 40% of us still live in rural
areas and many more have roots in the countryside, wherever we live – we
are the product of the caring work our mothers, grannies, sisters,
aunties and other women single or married, and their mothers before them
bestowed on us in times of great hardship.
The Irish constitution
has never before recognised the vital contribution of rural women. It
is too late for those who while they lived received no pension or other
entitlements in their own right which their work should have earned
them. But it is not too late to pay tribute to their work by
recognising its continuing value to society and the economy, and by
recognising
the role women continue to play in rural life today – particularly as
the livelihoods of small farmers and all who depend on them are
increasingly under threat in the global market.
In response to the international grassroots movement of
women for the recognition of unwaged caring work, which has the support
of many men, many countries are carrying out time-use surveys. And
increasingly, unwaged work, its quantity and economic value, is a
consideration in court decisions and governments’ policies.
The triple
day, pay equity and men’s support
Many women are forced by economic necessity to work the
double or triple day, going out to one or more waged jobs while also
carrying the responsibility of caring work at home. At the waged
workplace women are discriminated against in wages and working
conditions – paid less than their male colleagues even when both do the
same job. Even more widespread is the segregation of women in service
work which is much like the caring work most of us do at home. While
many of these jobs are highly skilled, these skills are not recognised
financially, and the status of the work is dragged down by the low
status of unwaged caring work at home. To end the sexist pay gap
between women and men, equal pay for work of equal value must be added
to the Constitution.
Pay equity
is already the agreed standard in a number of international policies and
agreements which the Irish State has signed on to, e.g. the ILO
Equal
Remuneration
Convention, the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
and the Beijing Platform for Action.
Article 2.1 of the ILO
Convention states:
Each member shall, by
means appropriate to the methods in operation for determining rates of
remuneration, promote and, in so far as is consistent with such methods,
ensure the application to all workers of the principle of equal
remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value.
(Concerning Equal
Remuneration for Men and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value, 1951)
To enshrine in the Irish Constitution the principle that
caring work in the home – which extends to caring for the whole
community and in rural areas to caring for and protecting the land and
the environment – is valued socially and economically, would ensure that
women, particularly mothers, are not penalised with the lowest pay when
they go out to work or discriminated against in areas such as pensions,
health care, childcare, and social welfare. It would be a major step
towards raising all women's status and entitlements.
Last but not least, it is our experience that men are
aware of their dependence on caring work, starting with the work of
their mothers. Many also agree that not counting caring work maintains
the traditional division of labour between the sexes. They agree that
raising the status of the carer would put women in a stronger position
to demand that men, who often miss out on children’s upbringing, take
their full share of responsibility and become carers too.
Contact address:
Global
Women’s Strike
National
co-ordination, Ireland:
Tel: 087 7838688 Email: Ireland@allwomencount.net
International co-ordination:
Crossroads Women’s Centre, 230A Kentish Town Rd, London,
NW5 2AB.
Tel: +44 (0) 207 4822496 Email:
womenstrike8m@server101.com
Why
the
Irish Constitution Must Recognise Workers in the Home and Pay Equity
,
VILLAGE magazine, 2-8 September 2005
home