With the Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality on a temporary pause due to the outbreak of Covid-19, we thought it would be the perfect time to recap on its work so far. 

 

The Citizens’ Assembly was established last July to bring forward proposals to the government to advance gender equality in Ireland. It is a body made up of the Chairperson, Dr Catherine Day, and 99 randomly selected citizens. These citizens are chosen by Red C Research & Marketing Ltd to be representative of the Irish public on the basis of age, gender, class and residence. On February 15th and 16th, the Citizens Assembly on Gender Equality gathered for their first meeting which involved a series of public presentations, private roundtable discussions, and feedback sessions. They examined the main issues around gender, gender norms and stereotypes and the family, hearing presentations from experts on these issues. 

 

Fellow Emeritus Professor Sheila Greene presented on ‘gender norms and stereotypes’ and defined norms and standards as “the behaviours expected from males and females, which vary cross-culturally and historically.” Sex role stereotypes, she said, are “beliefs held about male and female natures and capacities.” “Stereotypes can often operate unconsciously,” she said. “Typically, if you ask parents if they would treat their boys and girls any differently, they often (say) “oh no, no” but in actuality they find themselves doing so.”

 

One of the main areas impacted by gender norms and stereotypes are career paths and choices, with some roles and responsibilities still overwhelmingly associated with women. According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), over six in ten  (118,151) carers in Ireland are women. Dr. Anne-Marie McGauran, another of the expert presenters, discussed how just one per cent of childcare workers and only seven per cent of general nurses are men. According to McGauran, this is because social norms and attitudes lead to  men not being attracted to these non-traditional sectors (and often men who do take on these careers face prejudice and stereotypes). 

 

As well as being problematic from a gender-stereotyping point of view (i.e. only associating women, and not men, with caring and nurturing roles), this has wider repercussions for women’s pay and women’s independence. McGauran said that Ireland’s care system often relies on very low paid formal care, “it’s one of the sectors where pay is particularly low.” 

 

And women bear the burden of unpaid or low-paid family care too. “We really are very dependent … on unpaid care in the home, which is mostly carried out by women,” said McGauran.”Quite a lot of older men do this care as well where their wife becomes ill, but [this area] is mostly reliant on women’s care…”

 

Currently, the Constitution doesn’t recognise unpaid care in the home or Ireland’s responsibility to support  family carers. The closest thing to such a provision is Article 41.2 of the Constitution, which states that the place of a woman is at home:

“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 obligated by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

This clause is extremely controversial for obvious reasons, and was one of the main talking points for the Assembly, following a presentation by Professor Siobhán Mullally on ‘the family in the Constitution and the law’. 

 

The ‘woman in the home’ clause was already discussed by the Constitutional Convention in 2015. Back then, 98% of the Convention thought this clause should be replaced with a gender-neutral clause to include other carers in the home. A majority also thought the clause should extend to carers outside the home, and that carers should not have to work outside the home out of economic necessity. 

 

The Citizens’ Assembly endorsed the findings of the Convention that the clause should be deleted and/or replaced. But there was a lot of debate about how this change should be implemented, particularly with regard to how much financial support the State should provide to carers. These discussions will resume when the Citizens’ Assembly meets again. 

 

The observations made by the Citizens’ Assembly on gender stereotypes and norms are now particularly relevant in light of the coronavirus pandemic, because most carers and front-line healthcare workers are women. As per government guidelines, carers and family carers are one of the only groups exempt from the requirement to stay at home as they are providing an essential service. This is a difficult time for carers for both financial and safety reasons. For instance, Home and Community Care Ireland (HCCI) has said some carers are applying for the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment of €350 a week if their client self-isolates. This is because carers are only paid for two days if a client self-isolates of their own accord or upon the advice of public health authorities. 

 

Childcare is also a significant issue at this time. The CSO shows us that most single parents are women, with 143,100 women compared to 24,000 men. Even where both parents are present, women are far more likely to face the burden of looking after children at home, according to a recent Guardian article. The article references a recent Gallup poll which found that women were more than seven times as likely to care for their children on a daily basis as men in heterosexual married or cohabitating couples. Similar disparities are also evident in an Irish context

 

The Covid-19 pandemic is throwing many pre-existing societal issues into sharp relief, including the roles of men and women in society, and the domestic burden and care burden women still face. While many men are stepping up and sharing parental and other care duties at this time, it is evident that the discussions of the Citizens’ Assembly about gender norms and stereotypes are crucial as we are still a long way from attaining full gender equality. We hope that when the Citizens’ Assembly resumes, the gender issues unveiled by Covid-19 will be firmly on the Agenda. 

 

 

Photo from Citizens’ Assembly on Youtube

 

 

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