Women Rule On The Greek Island of Karpathos

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6/24/23, 6:22 PM Women rule on the Greek island of Karpathos | Philstar.com
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Women rule on the Greek

island of Karpathos
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Agence France-Presse - Philstar.com

June 11, 2023 BUSINESS
| 11:00amLIFE FASHION AND BEAUTY FOOD HEALTH AND FAMILY
This photograph taken on May 6, 2023, shows a sculpture dedicated

to women of Olympos, overlooking the remote village on the island of
Karpathos. In the north of the Greek island of Karpathos, the hillside
village of Olympos is home to one of the few matriarchal societies in
Greece that resists tourism and lifestyle standardization.
AFP / Louisa Gouliamaki
KARPATHOS, Greece — "Here it is women who

command!" declared Rigopoula Pavlidis, as she sang
the virtues of her remote village on the island of
Karpathos, one of Greece's rare matriarchal societies.
Sitting at a desk across the room painting religious

icons, her husband Giannis nodded silently.
"My husband can't do anything without me, not even

his tax return," Pavlidis laughed as she embroidered a

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traditional dress inside her workshop.
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In contrast to most of patriarchal Greece, the women

of Olympos play a commanding role in village life.
Isolated from the rest of the Dodecanese island, the

spectacular hillside village has safeguarded this
centuries-old tradition, which has survived the
Ottoman Empire in the 16th century and Italian rule in
the 20th.
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Until the 1980s, there was no asphalt road to Olympos.
Among the traditions that survive is a Byzantine-era

inheritance system that gives a mother's property to
the eldest daughter, said local historian Giorgos
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Tsampanakis.
Rigopoula, the seamstress, is one of the beneficiaries
of the tradition. She inherited 700 olive trees from her
mother.
"The families did not have enough property to divide

among all the children... and if we had left the
inheritance to the men, they would have squandered
it," she said.
Greek women traditionally moved into their new

husband's home upon marriage. In Olympos, the
opposite takes place.
And women's prominence is also reflected in their

names.
"The eldest daughter took the first name of the

maternal grandmother, unlike the rest of Greece, where
it was that of the paternal grandmother," said
Tsampanakis.
"Many women still call themselves by their mother's

surname and not their husband's," he added.
The role of women in Olympos was further

strengthened in the 1950s when the village men began
to emigrate for work — mainly to the United States and
European countries — leaving their wives and
d h b h d f l df
daughters behind to manage families and farms on

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their own.
'We had no choice'

"We had no choice butSPORTS ENTERTAINMENT LIFESTYLE OTHER SECTIONS

to work in the absence of the
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men. It was our only way of surviving," recalled 67-
year-old Anna Lentakis
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hamlet of Avlona near Olympos. ON THE RADAR PETS TRAVEL
A few years ago, Lentakis ran the Olympos tavern. This

has now passed into the hands of her eldest daughter
Marina.
"I don't know if we were early feminists... but I like to

say that the man is the head of the family, and the
woman the neck," said Marina, who is in her 40s.
Marina's daughter Anna is only 13 years old, but she

knows that one day she will take up the torch.
"It's my grandmother's legacy and I'll be proud to take

care of it!" she said.
But the "feminist" inheritance system only benefits the

eldest children, said Alain Chabloz of the Geographical
Society of Geneva, who has studied the subject.
"The youngest sons were forced into exile, and the

youngest daughters had to stay on the island at the
service of the elders. A kind of social caste was
created," he said.
Giorgia Fourtina, the youngest of her family and

unmarried, helps her older sister in the restaurant and
in the fields.
Fourtina does not feel that Olympos society is Subscribe

particularly progressive: "It's a small society where a
woman alone in a cafe is frowned upon," she said.
Women "are the onesSPORTS
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said Yannis Hatzivassilis, a local sculptor, who has SUPPORT PHILSTAR
crafted an iconic statue

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The older women of Olympos traditionally wear

embroidered costumes consisting of flowered aprons,
a headscarf and leather boots.
Treasured heirlooms that are part of a girl's dowry,

these costumes can cost up to 1,000 euros ($1,077)
and require hours of work.
Irini Chatzipapa, a 50-year-old baker, is the youngest

Olympos woman to still wear it every day.
"I taught my daughter to embroider, but except for the

holidays, she does not wear it as it's not adapted to
modern life," she said.
Chatzipapa's 70-year-old mother chimes in: "Our

costume is becoming just folklore for the holidays...
Our world is disappearing."
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6/24/23, 6:22 PM Women rule on the Greek island of Karpathos | Philstar.

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