The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) will today call for a referendum to repeal Article 41.2 of the Constitution, the Article on the family, which guarantees to protect the role of women in the home.
It will also call for a specific amendment to the Constitution outlawing discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, as well as 11 other grounds.
The recommendations come in a submission to the UN committee monitoring Ireland's compliance with its Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women.
This will be launched by Supreme Court judge Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness later today.
The commission has a statutory mandate to comment on human rights in law but the Government does not have to accept its views.
According to the submission, the persistence of gender dis- crimination in Ireland is shown by women's gross under-representation in political life; higher prevalence of poverty; and lower earnings than men.
The State submitted its five-yearly report to the UN committee last September, and the IHRC is submitting its own report as a commentary on Ireland's achievements under the convention. It contains a list of suggested questions for the UN committee, as well as recommendations for future reform.
According to the IHRC submission: "Article 41.2 of the Constitution is based on an outdated view of the social roles of women as homemakers and mothers, thus ascribing to women a limited and dependent role which, in the view of the IHRC, is in violation of Articles 2 and 5 of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women."
It also states that Article 40.1 of the Constitution should be amended to prohibit direct and indirect discrimination on the basis of gender, race, colour, age, disability, sexual orientation, religious belief, membership of the Travelling community, language, political opinion, property, birth or other status.
It calls for the monitoring of the position of women in Irish society through the compilation of comprehensive and up-to-date data.
Certain groups of women are identified by the IHRC as being vulnerable to discrimination in Ireland. These include women living in poverty, and it points out that 23 per cent of women are in danger of suffering from poverty. "Specific groups are at a particularly high risk including older women, women in home duties, female lone parents, disabled women, Traveller women and rural women.
"Female poverty is largely a result of women's dependent economic status and women's unequal access to economic resources," according to the submission. It also stresses the danger of older women suffering disproportionately from poverty.