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Are there any important issues concerning gender in Greece?  YES!!  And many of these issues begin at home...

Background Information

In Greece, the family represents the central social institution and provider of social support.  Greece is dominated by traditional family roles and households, and seems to have the strongest attachment to the traditional family type out of all European countries.  Within these families, specifically working-class families, the household structure has been associated with gender relations within the family.  In other words, families aim for secure control within the family by orienting different family members to different occupations according to gender division of roles inside the family.  Therefore, men are expected to take on jobs that make them the main income earner, while women are expected to be secondary income earners, placing household duties as their priority.  In creating this separation of gender roles, women become the sole caretaker of children and elderly family members, while also relying on men for support.

How Policies Can Harm

Policies in Greece, which are further described in the Greece Policies section of this website, also help to support the gender divide in Greek families in several ways....

• The result of some of these policies is that there is only a one day paternity leave for fathers after the birth of a child, while there is a forced 17 week maternity leave for all mother.  This means that women have no choice but to rely on men to make money to support the family, since women themselves are unable to work. 
• A lack of policies related to family issues means that women have not had the chance to be equal to men, since within the family situation now, women are treated as inferior to men.  For example, many immigrants in need of a job in Greece look to families who are in need of labor for family farms or other family enterprises.  When families hire immigrants to work for them, it is the labor of the women that is ALWAYS weighed against outside labor.  In other words, the work that women perform is subject to deliberation, while the work that men do is taken for granted as being more important.  
• Familism, the idea in Greece that the lack of action of family policies helps to support the implied idea that the family is the main provider of welfare and support, isolates women by forcing them to rely almost completely on their families for support.   These same families currently do not think that women are as important as men.

What this Means for Women

Problems with gender exist in many areas of Greece outside of the family, and many of these issues originate from the ideals of traditional Greek society.  In terms of their own families, Greek women have been noted as being silent and submissive to men, allowing males to make decisions in almost every major area concerning the family, including the public sphere of control over material resources, children’s futures, and the general public image of the family.  The creation of more family policies, in combination with less of a reliance on the idea of familism, may help to begin to change the view in Greece that women are subjordinate to men.

Sources:

• Columbia University. 2006. "The Clearinghouse on International Developments in Child, Youth and Family Policies.", Retrieved October 29, 2006 (www.childpolicyintl.org).

• Karakasidou, Anastasia N. 1996. "Women of the Family, Women of the Nation: National Enculturation among Slavic Speakers in Northwestern Greece." Women's Studies International Forum 19(1-2):99-109.

• Lambropoulou, Dimitra, Antonis Liakos and Yannis Yannitsiotis. 2006. "Work and Gender in Greek Historiography during the Last Three Decades." Rethinking Work, Gender and Society:173-2-14.

• Papadopoulos, Theodoros N. 1996. "Greek Family Policy From A Comparative Perspective." Pp. 47-48-57 in Women, Work and the Family in Europe, edited by E. Drew, R. Emereck and E. Mahon.Routledge.

• Population Reference Bureau. 2006. "Population Reference Bureau.", Retrieved October 29, 2006 (www.prb.org).