Issue No.
13376
The times they are a-changin’: The old idea that a women’s place is in the home just won’t do
Maria Stratigaki, the justice ministry’s new general secretary for equality
THE FACT of Greek life: women in Greece seldom reach the highest ranks in business and politics.
According to Maria Stratigaki, the justice ministry’s new general secretary for equality, the reason few women hold senior decision-making positions in the Greek corporate world and in political circles is that the career path of most working mothers in Greece is a series of stops and starts.
Society, she says, needs to change the attitudes and values that define gender roles. There’s no more room for the old-school mentality that a woman’s place is in the home.
“Women still tend to cut back their working hours so that they can juggle a home life with their careers,” says Stratigaki, who was appointed by the government last year to drive the country’s gender equality agenda forward.
Couch potatoes
“In Greece, we still do not have the attitudes in favour of women taking an equal role in the workplace because the men do very little in terms of housework and childcare,” Stratigaki says. “The situation in Greece is very different compared to other countries, like the Scandinavian countries. In the end, women in Greece work two jobs - one in the home and another outside the home.”
According to Stratigaki, who used to teach gender studies at the University of Athens, there is still some way to go before Greek society changes and the boardroom is no longer a men’s club.
Despite being better educated - more than half of today’s university graduates are women, the National Statistical Agency says - they are concentrated in low-income jobs, service work, the public sector and part-time employment. The largest occupational group among women is salespersons, followed by domestic and personal care workers.
And at the end of the day, women take home 90 cents for every euro that men earn at the same job.
“I’m optimistic that this will change,” Stratigaki says. “I have to be optimistic.”
Some change, but...
The situation has improved over the past decade, but it wasn’t due to any broad social change in attitudes towards women’s roles.
“The increase in the availability of immigrant cleaning ladies and baby-sitters has significantly helped [Greek] women,” she says. “But at the same time it has given the men more reason not to take on more responsibilities in the home.”
According to Stratigaki, gender equality means that women and men share family responsibilities and are equally represented in government, parliamentary assemblies, managerial posts, unions and public and private bodies, as well as in all public institutions.
Her top priority this year is to promote gender mainstreaming - the full integration of gender equality into all social and economic policy - so that half of Greece’s population (women) no longer gets a worse deal than the other half.
“We will work closely with all the government ministries to ensure that policymakers always take gender equality into consideration,” Stratigaki says. “We want to create an observatory to track and influence policy. Our success will depend on how committed the government is to promoting gender equality and on the political will of each minister.”
Double trouble
Quotas
Gender quotas aimed at increasing women’s participation in law enforcement and other public agencies and institutions need to be revised because they no longer work, says Maria Stratigaki, general secretary for equality.
Police quotas for the hiring of women, for instance, now work against women. “The quotas limit the numbers of women being hired on the police force at a time when increasing number of women are enrolling in the police academy,” Stratigaki says. “This is why the quota should be abolished.”
Income taxes
Legislation requiring spouses to file a joint tax return needs to be abolished, Stratigaki says. “It’s not fair to the wife,” she says. “Even though each spouse’s income is taxed separately, the wife’s return is sent in her husband’s name,” she says. “And if the husband owes money in taxes, the wife is not entitled to a forologiki enimerotita [special tax certificate issued by the tax office to sell or buy property].
This is an issue that women’s rights activists are currently challenging in the courts on the grounds the current tax law discriminates against women.
By the numbers
- Women in Greece gained the right to vote in 1952. The legislation was passed one year after the country signed the United Nations Convention on Women’s Political Rights - and more than 30 years of fierce lobbying by the Greek League of Women’s Rights - a group founded by Avra Theodoropoulou and Maria Negraponti in the 1920s
- Based on the findings of research conducted by the Greek National Centre for Social Research (EKKE), the socioeconomic status of women in Greece is traditional: women are homemakers. A 2002 study suggested that women spend on average almost four times as many hours on housework per week (34 hours) compared to men (nine hours), and almost twice as much time on childcare
- According to the economy ministry’s National Statistical Service, the unemployment rate among women last year (13.1 percent) was more than double that of men (6.6 percent)
- Gender equality is enshrined in the Greek Constitution. Article 4 states: “Greek men and women have equal rights and equal obligations.” Article 22 states: “All workers, irrespective of sex or other distinctions, shall be entitled to equal pay for work of equal value”
- One year after Greece joined the European Union, the government created the position of special adviser to the prime minister on equality and established the office of the general secretariat for equality at the interior ministry
ATHENS NEWS 30/08/2010, page: 16-17
