Women in Greece

Megan Culkins

GWS 220W

Essay 1

Women in Greece

            Located in southern Europe, Greece is known for its beautiful beaches, the birthplace of the Olympics and the Greek Isles.  Their culture is noted for strong importance of family that is depicted through movies like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” which also shows some of the roles of women in the family and in the workforce.  Greece is a developed country but they are still working toward more equality between men and women.  They are struggling to work against a high rate of abortion and low level of sex education in schools.  A women living in Greece also describes what social settings and dating are like for women of Greece and how although they are a modern society, their socialization between men and women seems is not keeping up with the times. 

            With a population of 11.3 million people and approximately fifty percent of them being women, they account for a large portion of society and play a major role in daily life all over the country.  An importance and vital part of Greek society is the Greek Orthodox Church, which ninety-eight percent of the country belongs too (Greece 2011).  Education has a great impact on Greek three years beyond that are optional but are still free to students (Culture 2012).  About five million people in Greece are a part of the workforce whether it is in agriculture, manufacturing or the service industry.  The majority of people are in the service industry which accounts for 78.8 percent of Greece’s gross domestic profit and includes any tourism services within the country (Greece 2011). 

            It is very well known that in Greece, family is one of the most important things in life.  They serve as a source of support, identity and connection (Culture 2012).  Men and women usually marry around the age 24 to 25 and upon marriage parents usually give a portion of their property and money to their children so that they can start their new married life and the beginning other their adulthood well (Greece 2011).  Family life also typically focuses on the women of the house because they typically do much around the house, like the cooking, cleaning and in general the just look after the family (Greek 2005).  Mothers and other women in the family also tend to treat sons like princes until they get married and leave the house.  This probably results in the lack of participation from men in the daily chores of a household (Greek 2005).  Although the sons may be treated like princes, in the end sons and daughters usually get the same through inheritances in any property or money. This is also enforced because equal partible inheritance is a norm in the Greek by customs and by law (Culture 2012).

            In rural areas of Greece, men and women usually share many of the responsibilities.  Some they choose to do together and others are done separately according to gender (Culture 2012).  As Greece has become more urbanized though, there has been shift of the role of women in the home and in the workforce.  While in previous years many women just stayed home and took care of the family, they have started to increase their role in the labor force.  Women are still working hard to be at the same level professionally as men though.  They suffer from less important positions and lower pay (Culture 2012).  They are increasing their presence in the workforce now though making up approximately forty-five percent of the five million people working.           

            Before this change in society typically men were associated with public areas and women were present in more private areas of life, except for the church.  Their involvement in the church consisted of cleaning and maintaining the church and regularly attended (Culture 2012).  Along with their role in the church, they play a very large role at home too.  They typically fulfill the economic role and own and maintain the property.  Women have now increased their role in the public and hold jobs in many different areas including restaurants, nightclubs, stores and public plazas.  This probably is an effect of the majority of students at universities being women.       Women are also beginning to hold more public offices as well.  Today about fifteen to twenty-four of the national government’s elected officials are women.  They also have an increasing presence in the European parliament with twenty-nine of Greece’s delegates elected to the parliament of the European Union being women (Seager 2008).  With women gradually becoming more prevalent in government, they can start to voice their opinions about feminism in Greece and gain even more equality between men and women.

            The Family Planning Association of Greece works with the International Planned Parenthood Federation to inform and educate young men and women.  The FPAG promotes having sex education in schools, where currently it is only an option to include in the curriculum and not a requirement.  The goal of starting sex education in schools is that it will help prevent unwanted pregnancies and teach safe sex (Country 2012).  Recently, the country has relied on parents to teach their children about safe sex practices but in reality this rarely happens.  The country is making an effort to start educating young women and inform them of the different options they have and the FPAG is supporting the government’s Family Planning and Reproductive Health Policy so that together their goal is more attainable.  They are working to ensure that the choice of a contraceptive is not restricted and that all citizens benefit from family planning provisions at no cost.  Along with supporting government policies, the FPAG has joined with several women’s organizations, non-governmental organizations, local authorities and politicians to help guarantee safe abortions for women (Country 2012). 

            With Greece having one of the highest rates of abortion in Europe, improving the countries sex education could make a very big difference.  Young women aren’t taught the correct ways to prevent pregnancy and instead are told unreliable ways like withdrawal, rhythm methods and occasionally condoms.  Since this lack of information has become more public, there has been a need for family planning clinics, that first started opening in the 1980’s (Ioannidi-Kaolou 2004).  Studies have shown that these clinics have helped a very small percentage of women but they are hoping to improve them and at the very least, provide a safe place for women to have an abortion as opposed to when abortion was illegal and they had to be performed secretively (Ioannidi-Kaolou 2004).  The high rate of abortion, approximately 150,000 to 250,000 in 2001, can be linked to the low birth rate which in a population of over 11 million is only about 100,000 births per year (Halkas 2003).  The high number of abortions seems to reflect some of the hesitation Greek’s feel towards modernization.  Some modern women are taking advantage of effective contraceptives like the pill as opposed to abortion but it is still not as prominent as some might like it to be. 

            While one point of view that abortion occurs more often because a lack of modernization, others argue that it is also a result of social change that shows women’s independence and the greater availability of abortion services (Halkas 2003).  People also see abortion as a women’s selfishness and her want to enter into the labor force.  Women are also called ignorant or backwards and some people feel these high rates of abortion are embarrassing the country to outsiders.  One woman describes that a major concern people have about children is how expensive they are.  She says that you have to be efficiently well-off in order to afford all the responsibilities that go along with having a child (Halkas 2003). 

            Since the twentieth century, Greece has faced many political conflicts and changes.  In 1981, the country joined the European Union and since has been democratic and is continuing to work towards modernization but that is not without challenges.  They have also experienced feminist movements and “public debates about how far Orthodox Christianity should be the moral framework for individuals and families” (Loizos 2005).  Educated Greeks protest that they can think for themselves and that they don’t need the church to tell them what to think about topics like sexuality and procreation.  Men and women have also been taking sexual relations more lightly.  More often today unmarried men and women are engaging in sexual relations together because of a desire and not in the context of marriage with a purpose of procreation (Loizos 2005). 

            Stephanie Kordas, a Greek-American, expresses her personal perceptions and experiences in Greece that in today’s culture are quite shocking.  Her stories give people a peak into real-life society in Greece and dating rituals from the perspective of a woman in the country.  From her encounters with Greek men, she has found that they have little respect for women as a part of Greece’s society and that although there is passion for femininity, but not for the actual woman and what she is capable of doing.  She discusses the process of dating as well, laying out “rules” to follow in order to ensure you found a suitable Greek man.  The first rule she emphasizes is that a man should not live with his mother or even near her, in relation to what was mentioned previously about mother’s treating their sons like princes.  Next she indicates that a man is more open-minded if he has studied or traveled to other countries.  Lastly, she claims that it is important to find out how he feels about women since it will often reflect how he will most likely treat you (Kordas 2005).  These unspoken rules about dating show the unequal expectations between men and women in the dating world.

            A man told Kordas that there are the beautiful women you have affairs with and then there are women you marry, that your family would approve of.  It is also not uncommon for their affairs to occur while they are married.  It is practically expected of men in Greece and the women are just supposed to accept it but if the tables were to turn, husbands would often leave their wife for sharing even one night with another man.  Men want “a woman to support his image, make his coffee, cook his dinner, wash and iron his clothes, raise his children, and when necessary, massage his ego so that he still feels like a man” (Kordas 2005).  Even in today’s society where many men and women have to work in order to maintain the household, the men still want to make sure the women know their job is more important.  Along with the lack of respect in a marriage, she describes how there is a lack of respect in the work force and that no matter what position or how educated a woman is, it is likely that she will be underpaid, overworked and taken advantage of (Kordas 2005).  Men and women need to start becoming more equal not only on a dating level but in marriage as well.  If women can gain more respect in their own homes it will help them gain more respect in other aspects of Greek life. 

            Greece is very much in a transition period between the need for more sex education in schools and the changing roles of women in the family and in the work force.  It is a slow process but hopefully one day they will catch up the other modern societies and have more equal relations between men and women.  Their social relationships are also transforming and are moving away from their traditional roles.  Women are becoming more visible in the workforce, politics and throughout the rest of their society. 

           

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Kordas, Stephanie. "What Greece Is Really Like (for Women)." GREECE TRAVEL: Matt Barrett's Guides to Greece and the Greek Islands. 2005. Web. 05 Feb. 2012. <http://www.greecetravel.com/kordas/forwomen.htm>.

Loizos, Peter. "The Empty Cradle Of Democracy: Sex, Abortion, And Nationalism In Modern Greece." Journal Of The History Of Sexuality 14.3 (2005): 339-344. Women's Studies International. Web. 6 Feb. 2012.

Seager, Joni. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World: Fourth Edition. Penguin, 2008. Print.