Violence against women in Greece

Life has been good to me! Besides many intangibles I own a house, a car, and many other important but less valuable objects. What I do not own is my wife and daughters. This should be self-evident to everyone; the days of owning human beings are gone. And yet, every so often a man will kill a woman in Greece, wife or former wife, girlfriend or ex, even a daughter sometimes.

The excuse by the perpetrator is always the same “She drove me to it,” “I lost my mind,” “She humiliated me,” “I loved her so much.” This is nonsense that no judge or jury should accept. Behind the above excuses there is the hidden truth; the man in question thought of the woman as his property, someone who cannot leave him no matter what.

If I understand right, laws in Greece do not recognize such excuses as “honor killing” anymore but such incidents happen quite often. The problem then is not the law, and certainly not the women, but rather a culture that teaches men early on that women are their possession and any attempt by her to leave is an offense against the man’s honor and masculinity.

I grew up in that culture, like many Greek men of my generation, but I was too young to get involved in such sorry affairs, I was 18 when I left Greece, but sometimes I wonder if I would be the same “man of honor” like the ones in the news lately. But the Greece I grew up in does not exist anymore! People are better educated, they travel and know other cultures. Women also have changed; they work outside of the home in large numbers, and many earn enough money to allow them to leave an abusive or unsatisfactory relation.

Maybe that’s the root of the problem; not “honor” or “love” but rather the reality that these days women have choices that our mothers did not have. They don’t need a man to “protect” them or “provide” for them and this seems to be a trigger for certain males whose self-esteem is tied to their “possessions.” The good sign is that Greek society seems aware of the issue and there is pressure to make changes. Some changes have to be institutional, in the last case of “woman killing” the police did not take the necessary measures when the would-be victim reported her eventual killer. This clearly has to change by law and through better police training. But at the end of the day this is a social issue, and the Greek society has to come up with a solution.

A few years ago, I read a book by Patricia Storace, an American who speaks good Greek and spent a year living in Athens in the early 1980s. The book “Dinner With Persephone” describes her life in Greece. It is always interesting to read how outsiders view us Greeks, Greece, and our culture. I do remember something that the author noticed. She wrote that most Greek movies, from the 1950s all the way to the 1980s, and many/most TV shows, comedy, or drama, portrayed violence against women almost as a natural phenomenon. At times the “bad man” was abusive indeed, but often a woman would be slapped by her father, brother, husband almost as a matter of course. In short, hitting women was more or less accepted at some point in our recent history.

I hope we have evolved since then. Simply put, there is no place in modern society for anyone to raise a hand towards another human being (non-humans as well come to think of it). Hitting someone is not a way to “teach” them. It is all fine and well to say that as per Greek law women are equal to men but until society accepts this, Greek women will not be equal.

A final note: The above problem is not unique to Greece, and certainly the US, where I live, has a long way to go on this issue. No society is perfect, but it is up to us to keep improving our lives.

John Mazis is professor of history at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.