Literature review

De Valera decided to change the Constitution, so in 1937 is born the Draft Constitution. It has brought up a lot of complains from the women in Ireland.

For this literature review, I chose two texts talking about this subject. The first one is A “sinister and retrogressive” proposal: Irish women’s opposition to the 1937 Draft Constitution which was written by Maria Luddy in 2004. And my second text is the chapter 9 “The Constitution and the Role of Women” in De Valera’s Constitution and ours by Yvonne Scannell written in 1988.  These two documents talk about the changes for the women with the Draft Constitution and what happened during this time.

Firstly, in her written piece Maria Luddy uses as primary sources different kind of texts. She uses the Irish Constitution, the old one and the draft one, she also uses reports of Commission of the government or of the women’s movement, and Dail debates and speeches. By using this kind of sources, official documents, her arguments seem stronger and undeniable. She quotes a lot of articles from newspapers such as Irish Press, Irish Independent, or Dublin Opinion. This allowed her to talk about how was seen this topic in the society and what was said about it at this time. Maria Luddy take as references, people’s diaries such as the one from Kathleen Lynn or Rosamond Jacob, which gave her few points of view of this time but it could be not objective. She decides to take as well some secondary sources like some Irish historian studies and books to support her study. She uses my other the text “The Constitution and the Role of Women” of Yvonne Scannell as a reference.

On the other hand, Yvonne Scannell uses as primary resources, like Maria Luddy, Dail Debates and commissions, Articles from the Constitution and the Proclamation of 1916.

Those documents are official documents which have a strong influence on her arguments because they came from the Government, the State. She also decides to use articles of law and reports of the High Court and from the Justice. By quoting real facts she give weight to her arguments.

Moreover she quotes her other work, this can show that she knows the theme so she knows what she was talking about. She also uses secondary resources by quoting historian books.  

Yvonne Scannell doesn’t use much secondary sources as Maria Luddy, but this may be because Y. Scannell wrote it way before M. Luddy. Scannell didn’t have that much of resources at this time.

Secondly, they both have their arguments about the women and the Draft Constitution.

In the first text, A “sinister and retrogressive” proposal: Irish women’s opposition to the 1937 Draft Constitution, Maria talks a lot about the Draft Constitution, what it was going to change. But she also defines how the women fought against it, or why some supported it.

She explaines in a first place how the life and their places in Ireland before the Draft Constitution was. She lists few laws, like the I927 Juries Act, the marriage bar in place and that women were subjected to lower salary and pension rates to men1 or the 1929 Censorship of Publications Bill prohibited the advertisement of contraceptives, which restrained women’s rights.

 Then, she says that the Draft Constitution was going to make women life even harder. They will have even less freedom and liberty and no equality between women and men.

She tries to support that by categorizing people and giving their arguments for or against the Draft Constitution. She writes a lot in this paper about feminist organisations, the National University Women Graduates' Association and the Joint Committee of Women's Societies and Social Workers.  They were the main actor protesting against this change because most of changes in the Constitution were about the role and place of women. She explains that they called woman to read and be conscious of these changes on their rights.

She says that “Feminists, the Catholic Church, parliamentarians and women republicans all had something to say on the position of women in the constitution”2.

Moreover she explains that those women wrote to De Valera to complain.

They tried to express themselves through newspapers. But they were not always nice about

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1. Mary E. Daly, 'Women in the Irish Free State, 1922-1939: The Interaction between Economics and Ideology'
2. A “sinister and retrogressive” proposal: Irish women’s opposition to the 1937 Draft Constitution, Maria Luddy, page 178

those women’s actions like Irish press which was the 'necessary coping stone to all the speeches, lectures and propaganda of the Fianna FAil party'3.

The republican women’s opposition took part in this because they saw the Draft Constitution as a betrayal of the Proclamation of 1916.

But there is one thing that she says that is quite unusual, “many women trade unionists, believed that women's place was in the home and Bennett, like de Valera, believed that male breadwinners should earn enough to allow wives to remain in the home”4, some women were against the Draft Constitution but at the same time they agreed with the role that De Valera had about women.

Maria Luddy also talks a little about people in favour if this change.

The first one was the Church who believed that woman place is at home. The Church did not help the women organisations in this fight.

A lot of women were in favour of this, they believed that mothers should be concentred on their duty at home and not work outside.

But the main actor in favour of the Draft Constitution was no other than De Valera and his party.

She says that he used poor arguments like forbidden women to work it was going to lead to a reduction in male unemployment.

But she explains that after all the pressure that the women movement put, he decided to do some compromise in the Draft Constitution

Finally in her conclusion, she tells that the referendum had been hold and the result was that the Draft Constitution was accepted.

And she finishes by saying that we cannot know if the movement had a real impact on the women opinion. In a documentary, women were asked about it and most of them did not remember this5. And that campaign was small and was organised and run by middle-class

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1. Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland in the Twentieth Century (2003) 146
2. Cullen Owens, Bennett, 89-90.
3. Hoodwinked: Irish Women since the 1920os. Broadcast on RTE television

women, and mostly in the Dublin area, and tried to express themselves to the rest of the country through the newspapers.

She also quotes Yvonne Scannell who talked about the effect of the constitution was to relegate women to a life of domesticity and powerlessness6. Maria tells that is an exaggeration.

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