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@aral I am not in Ireland but I think that is quite a bad take, at l least wrt Article 41.2, the support of women. As Selma James and the Global Women's Strike have taught us, capitalism relies on domestic labour. It needs a healthy, fed, educated workforce. That labour is done by women because it can use a patriarchal division of labour to refuse to pay for it, externalising a major cost, hence the demand for wages for housework.

Although Article 41.2 does not enshrine a wage for domestic work, it comes close. 'The state shall endeavour...' The proposed change seriously weakened that commitment.

It is true that the focus on women as the providers of domestic labour is patriarchal and the proposed change would have recognised any carer, but at the cost of reducing their current protection. Existing equalities legislation can be used to achieve the same effect. Any scheme guaranteeing income support to mothers would have to be extended to all primary carers or be in breach of nondiscrimination legislation.

In the end what has been rejected is a change that would reduce the rights of mothers and increase the patriarchal protection exploitation of women (its still overwhelming women doing domestic labour) for the purely symbolic recognition that there is nothing essential about care and womanhood. I don't see that as a set back in the struggle for women's liberation