The overwhelming vote for repeal of the Eighth Amendment represents a cathartic, watershed moment for Irish society. But the result should not be seen as Ireland’s coming of age, as its entry into the modern world, or as a gift conferred on us by the establishment parties with the blessing of the liberal commentariat.
Instead it has to be understood as the product of sustained and determined struggle by thousands of predominantly working-class women over the past 35 years, with the support of allies in the progressive trade union movement, in communities and on the political left.
Their job seemingly done, the political establishment and the economic interests it serves will now return to business as usual — the business of low wages and precarious work; rising wealth and income inequality; industrial-scale corporate tax avoidance; homelessness, property speculation and rack-renting; two-tier and crises-ridden healthcare; systemic abuse and cover-ups; and endemic police corruption.
But having decisively broken the moral authority of the Catholic Church, stemmed the tide of attacks on women’s rights and invigorated an entire generation of young people across the island, many involved with the Repeal campaign are now looking to push on.
Already the Tories are coming under intense pressure to decriminalise abortion in the North in the face of DUP resistance, while the accompanying campaign for marriage equality, too, raises the unfulfilled demand of ‘British rights for British citizens’ first articulated in the 1960s.
In the South, the next phase for the Repeal movement is securing the proper legislative provisions for abortion and there are questions to be asked about access for those in receipt of medical cards, without which reproductive rights will remain a class issue.
Others are turning their attention to the Church’s grip on education, which is anathema to the fundamental republican principle of the separation of church and state and, as we know, has caused untold damage to the lives of Irish children. Still others are keen to use the momentum achieved by the campaign to build and mobilise a movement capable of transforming Irish society, to challenge existing social and economic relations and, against the backdrop of Brexit and unionist intransigence, to create something new.
Unpaid work – a gender and class issue
Whatever transpires in the coming months and years, we can be sure that Ireland has entered a new historic moment ripe with possibilities for profound change. One issue that is both pertinent to the current conjuncture and neglected as a potential site of struggle for the trade union movement is that of unpaid and reproductive labour — ie, the unpaid work that takes place outside the formal sphere of production yet is fundamental to Irish capitalism’s survival and accumulation.
Article 41.2 of the Irish Constitution reads: “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.”
In other words, women shall be instructed by legislation and cultural norms established by the Church, state, and economic and political elites to engage primarily in the gendered tasks of cooking, cleaning, caring etc, both to the detriment of their participation in the workplace and without due recognition that such tasks themselves constitute important forms of labour.
Over the past century women in Ireland have struggled against the established gendered and class relations that have seen them confined to the home or, worse still, forced into Magdalene laundries and mother-and-baby homes where they slaved away in appalling conditions, for no pay and under the constant threat of abuse.
While these struggles have brought about significant advances, the social, economic and cultural dynamics that reinforce gendered (and class) roles persist. One manifestation of this is the fact that, according to OECD national time use surveys, Irish women carry out more than 70% of unpaid work. It should be added that the majority of these women are likely to be from working-class backgrounds, unable to afford the costs of childcare and other domestic supports.
This figure compares unfavourably with other small open economies and peer countries in northern Europe, where high quality state-sponsored childcare provision, state support for those with caring responsibilities and different social norms are among the factors enabling more balanced gender participation in the labour market.
This situation has been exacerbated through austerity, with the decimation of key public services, the removal of income supports for lone parents and carers, and the increasingly low-wage and precarious nature of employment in Ireland. And while the South was previously home to a half-arsed welfare state, with a special role reserved for the Church and charities, we are seeing the increasing privatisation of social reproduction from welfare and pensions to social care and children’s services.
Demanding compensation for unpaid labour
This leads to two main considerations for the Irish trade union movement. The first is that we need to investigate and better understand the value of unpaid and reproductive labour in Ireland. A groundbreaking study published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2014 shows that total unpaid work in Britain had a value of £1.01 trillion, equivalent to 56% of GDP.
The study shows that women put in more than double the proportion of unpaid work when it comes to cooking, childcare and housework, while also revealing that people on lower incomes tended to carry out more unpaid work than other income brackets.
A similar study conducted in an Irish context would provide a more rounded picture of the nature of unpaid and socially reproductive labour, its role in sustaining Irish capitalism and its associated inequalities.
The second thing to consider is how we might advance policy solutions that compensate unpaid labour, ensure that capital begins to shoulder the cost for social reproduction and ultimately have a transformative impact on Irish society.
Universal public childcare
A useful starting point would be for the trade union movement and political left to initiate a national conversation around a universal public childcare system, something that has been advocated in the past by Unite, Right2Change, Indepedents4Change, amongst others, and most recently endorsed by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) Women’s Conference in March of this year.
This has the potential to unite trade unions and communities, the low paid and the unemployed, migrant and ‘homegrown’ workers, all in pursuit of an objective that will reduce the burden of unpaid labour, reduce gender and class inequalities, remove a significant barrier to employment and contribute to the common good.
These are steps that would improve people’s lives whilst beginning to address the basis and logic of Irish capitalism itself. As such they would build on and seek to honour the considerable achievements of the Repeal movement.
[Reprinted from Irish Broad Left. Amy Ward is a contributing editor for Irish Broad Left. She is a researcher, student and trade union member based in Belfast. She is a founding member of the only Traveller Gypsy led organisation in the north and Britain, Tóme Anoshá. Follow her on Twitter @amyward82.]