Working From Home
On TradWife TikTok and the Irish referendum regarding women's place in the home
If you ask anyone what are some buzzwords that the Covid 19 pandemic makes them think of, I can guarantee you that “working from home” would be up there. The novelty of doing jobs usually reserved for the office was taken up with gusto and has completely changed the working landscape in Ireland long after the pandemic was declared to be over.
Tax credits came in for those beavering away at their computers in their spare rooms and people thought they were pioneers for combining the workplace and their homes.
But the thing is, people have been working from home for years. And the vast majority of those doing that work was women, caring for their families.
Article 41.2 of the Irish Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann states:
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.
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.
In March of 2023, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth of Ireland Roderic O'Gorman announced a referendum on gender equality and removing a Constitutional reference to a woman's place being in the home based off of recommendations from the Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality.
I regularly quoted the above article in university essays, using it as an example of discrimination against women and the influence of patriarchy in our country’s Constitution. As far as I was concerned it was an affront to all Irish women.
Thanks to the work of second wave feminism, a discussion about women’s economic and employment rights came to the forefront. Nowadays, remnants of that still remain with continuing talk surrounding the gender pay gap, women breaking the glass ceiling and ‘boss babe’ (vom) culture. While such progress is great in offering women the choices of work outside the home, it’s easy to get caught up in this and champion these women as the real heroes of feminism.
A more recent discussion point has been the tradwife trend on TikTok. As a non-social media person without seeing this content first hand, it appears to be content made by women who prefer to take on a more traditional role within their marriage, following the belief that a woman’s place is in the home. Often dressed like women straight out of the 1950s, they do not claim to be dismantling the work done by others in order to afford women the opportunities to work outside of the home. Instead, they believe it revolves around the personal choice of a woman to be a homemaker.
The trend has been accused of being a predominantly cis, white movement, pining for an era where sexism prevailed. Some of the main gripes that people have with the movement is that encourages women’s sole existence to be for the purpose of keeping men happy and relinquishing financial independence. The trend has also been accused of having links to alt-right groups.
And while I think there is cause for concern with the aforementioned issued, I also think there’s simply a lot of internalised misogyny underwriting people’s issues with the idea of women working in the home in a traditional role. Even within an article from The Guardian, women who take on the traditional role within the home and their actions within the domestic sphere were not even considered to be work in comparison to those who pursued occupations in the occupational sphere:
“So a “tradwife” is a woman who doesn’t work so as to look after their children, their husband, their home and then talk non-stop about how great this is on social media”.
The discussions surrounding the Tik Tok trend and the amending of the Irish Constitution made me think about my own female family members who stayed at home to raise their children, even if it was not out of choice but rather for financial reasons or simply that it was the ‘done thing’. It struck me the most was that it can often be fellow women who view stay at home mothers with such little respect, and it is here the influence of second wave feminism seems the strongest.
Regarding Article 41.2 of the Constitution, the citizen’s assembly's recommended removing "the limits on women’s role, to value and recognise care in the home and the wider community; and to protect all families equally”.
Upon hearing that such a referendum was coming for us, I worried. I was concerned that people would take a very black and white approach to it, and beat the simplistic feminism drum and call for the removal of any reference to women working in the home completely, discrediting the role and work they do entirely.
It heartened me to hear that The National Women’s Council of Ireland does not support such rhetoric. NWC director Orla O’ Connor said in the Irish media that “we've known for a long time that we need to remove Article 41.2, which relates to very much saying a women's role is in the home. And, you know, the National Women's Council is very clear, we want to see that out. But also significantly is the inclusion of the value of care and recognising the importance of care in our society.”
While women’s place in our constitution solely existing within the home is outdated and is in desperate need of updating, it is also important to continue to recognise and commend the often intensive labour they do within that sphere. Striving for financial independence and wanting a life outside of a caring role is absolutely admirable, but in a world where society seems to be breaking further apart, the role of caregiving and that expression of love is something to be admired.
It is perhaps felt that stay at home mothers are letting down the women before them who fought for employment rights but I would argue that whether it's acknowledging the work women do within the home, or not judging a woman today for choosing to leave her job to raise her child, feminism truly comes down to having respect for a woman to make her own decisions.
Even if it is not solely that woman’s choice to work solely within the home, for example if financial or childcare limitations hinder her opportunities to pursue employment, her work as a homemaker must be respected. While the tradwife trend has women all dolled up, twirling in vintage dresses and calming baking God knows what, working within the home in a caregiving role is not pretty or easy. There’s intensive manual labour, the noise pollution of crying kids, pressures to feed your family, and the incessant stream of bodily fluids from children. As they say, a woman’s work is never done and that is certainly the case in this regard.
In a time where women are admitting to struggling to manage corporate and home life, and acknowledging that the division of such labour is still uneven between men and women, who are we to judge women who for whatever reason occupy the role of primary caregiver.
My upbringing would not have been possible without my mother taking on the role of homemaker and I know of countless other families like ours where women work take on immense manual and emotional labour in order to support their families, working long hours that never seem to end.
Feminism is ultimately about giving women autonomy to make her own choices, and perhaps it should be remembered that this should include all women, not just those making strides in employment outside the home.