11. Gender Issues.

WHERE WOMEN RULE

Eleni Kotta, 33, is blonde and cheerful. “Here”, she says, “it’s not the boys who propose. They wait to be asked. Like objects”. “Here” is Trikeri, a Greek village of 2.000 perched on a rock at the tip of a peninsula in the Aegean Sea. For centuries, people say, the Earth here has spawned the seamen, who go out to fish or ship out on cargo vessels, far across the ocean. So, in this closed society, bound by traditions, it is women who have the last word. “They are the queen of the village,” says Kotta, with a gleam in her eyes.

The women in Trikeri are anything but striking. The old women, like mysterious silhouettes, stiffly wend their way along the mule paths that pass for streets. They go to cook their bread and pastry at the baker’s oven. They sit crocheting in the shade of a terrace, or scrub laundry in old tubs. The young women with “Dallas” style hair-dos, spend their time chatting, first at one house and then at another, or at a cafe, with lazy expressions and childish giggles.

They do not make much of an impression, but they decide everything: the children’s education, housework, the purchase of land, the family budget. And they decide on the unwritten laws that have always governed Trikeri. The men come home from the sea after weeks or months with armloads of gifts. They rest or drink tsipouro (a powerful liqueur) at the bar, and the women spoil them until they go to sea again. No one would dream of changing the division of roles. This system, formerly wide-spread in the Aegean, has been lost to modernity except in Trikeri, where people have always been wary of strangers.

The social system in Trikeri is “matrilocal”. A marriage or even an engagement means that the man goes to live with the woman, and it is the girls who inherit land and houses. The family has to own or to build as many roofs as there are female children. The boys inherit the boats. But the boat does not last – the land is eternal. And it is the maternal family that serves as a nest for infants and provides a social framework for the husband.

Men are not scorned in Trikeri – far from it. They play an economic and symbolic role. It is the father who gives his daughter away in marriage. But it is the mother who chooses the groom. Even community affairs, theoretically handled by men, are not settled without the women.

“The men exist to work and bring money. It’ a system we like,” Kotta says. Boys are raised with only that goal in view, and they go to sea when they are eight or ten years old. Since 1988, Trikeri has had a school where boys can study to become seamen, but with higher qualifications.

The girls are raised at first like boys, just as free. But when the girls are four or five years old, their grandmothers and mothers begin preparing their trousseaus. At the age of twelve the girls leave school. Not long ago, they were kept at home and put to work embroidering. That is less common today. If they show talent they can go to high school. But many of them, like many boys, prefer to stop after elementary school.

Elena Piscopia, an Italian mathematician and the first woman in the world to achieve a University doctorate at the University of Padua.^[54]

The treatment of women has changed dramatically in Italy over the ages. Women in Ancient Rome who were nobles were citizens, but could not run for political office or vote.^[55] Down to the 1950s and 60s, women had far fewer rights than men, since Italian society until the mid-20th century was mainly patriarchal. There were some distinguished women in Italy before the fifties, such as Elena Piscopia (the world's first female laureate), Maria Gaetana Agnesi (scholar, mathematician and philosopher) and Maria Montessori (educator), but women in Italy were rarely well-educated and were typically housewives,^[56] or nuns. Today Italian women have rights equal with men, and enjoy employment, business, and educational opportunities. However, the attitude towards equality also varies depending on the region; the south is often more traditional, thus more patriarchal. It is also important to consider that in 2010, Italy's ranking in the Global Gender Gap Report worsened further from 72 in 2009 to 74 in 2010, compared to for example, Nordic countries at the top, the United States at 19, France at 46, and China at 61.^[57]