Women's human rights are "seriously impeded" by the Irish Constitution, a senior member of a United Nations committee monitoring women's rights around the world has said.
Dr Hanna Beate Schopp-Schilling also criticised the lack of affordable childcare, the continued illegality of abortion, the lack of women in public and political life and the influence of the church in official State policy as factors contributing to the "de- facto inequality of women" here.
Dr Schopp-Schilling is a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), formed in 1979.
The 16-Article CEDAW was ratified by Ireland in 1985, although it was not signed into law.
The Department of Justice is currently finishing its combined fourth and fifth progress reports on CEDAW in Ireland, which will be submitted to the Government "in coming weeks" and the UN "shortly after".
Dr Schopp-Schilling, in Ireland last week to meet women's groups and Department of Justice officials, said she hoped the forthcoming reports would show progress on 23 key issues since Ireland's combined second and third reports in 1999.
"In our observations on those reports, the committee raised concerns about the influence of the church and particularly on this Article in your Constitution, Article 41.2, which the committee said reflected 'a stereotypical view of the role of women in the home and as mothers'," Dr Schopp-Schilling told The Irish Times.
Article 41.2 states: "In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home the woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved."
She said stereotypical views of men or women contributed to a culture where discrimination could be tolerated.
The lack of affordable childcare and the fact that parental leave remained an unpaid option had the effect of placing primary responsibility for family work and childcare on women.
This perpetuated a situation where women held the majority of part-time jobs and earned less than men, and where women were less likely than men to become involved in politics or hold senior management positions, she said.
On the issue of Irish women's health, the committee, in its last report on Ireland, said it was concerned that, "with very limited exceptions, abortion remains illegal in Ireland.
"Women who wish to terminate their pregnancies need to travel abroad. This creates hardship for vulnerable groups, such as female asylum-seekers who cannot leave the territory of the State."
She expressed a hope that health statistics would be split into gender-based categories in the forthcoming reports, to assess the impact of health policies on women's health here.
The Galway-based Women's Human Rights Project is writing a shadow report on the State's implementation of CEDAW.
The project's co-ordinator, Ms Noirín Clancy, said the report would stress that the life expectancy of women in Ireland was still one of the lowest in the EU; that violence affected 20 per cent of Irish women; that the percentage of women in the Dáil had remained static, at 13 per cent, in the 2002 election; and that family work and parenting remained primarily the responsibility of women.
