After the no-no vote, Irish women are stuck with a sexist constitution. Let’s use it

‘If we are to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, we need to have a conversation about the vital contribution of women, inside and outside the home.’ Photograph: Mostafa Darwish/EPA

For years, Ireland has prided itself on the determination of its voters to extract themselves from a constitutional straitjacket of Catholic social teaching and anachronistic views about women and girls.

The liberal torch was lit in earnest in 1995, when the people of this former Catholic outpost voted to remove its constitutional ban on divorce, albeit by a hair’s breadth. Ireland found itself on firmer ground in 2015, when the constitutionally recognised institution of marriage, on which the family is based, was extended to same-sex couples. That same year, the country passed, without incident, its Gender Recognition Act, allowing trans people to apply to have their preferred gender legally recognised by the state.