Sarah Harte: Why does it boil down to who cooks the dinner?

Supposedly our upcoming referendum will achieve a greater gender balance but will do no such thing. Instead, it’s another slap in the face for Irish women.

'It’s absurd that domestic work regardless of who performs it is still outside of and unrelated to supporting the economy. And that this work is economically unmeasured, uncounted, and unrecognised in the sense that it's unpaid and uncompensated.'

Over the recent holidays in between being sick and peeling potatoes, I read Who cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? by Swedish economist Katrine Marçal which made me think of the upcoming referendum on removing the constitutional reference to the role of women in the home.

Marçal’s book felt particularly resonant given that it was Christmas. After all, behind every good meal, is somebody peeling the potatoes. How often is that a woman?