Cyprus Status of Women
Breadbaking in a Cypriot village
Courtesy Republic of Cyprus, Press and Information Office, Nicosia
Traditional Cypriot wedding
Courtesy Embassy of Cyprus, Washington
Postwar changes greatly affected Greek Cypriot women's
place in
society, especially changes which gave them expanded
access to
education and increased participation in the work force.
At the
beginning of the century, the proportion of girls to boys
enrolled
in primary education was one to three. By 1943, some 80
percent of
girls attended primary school. When, in 1960, elementary
education
was made compulsory, the two sexes were equally enrolled.
By the
1980s, girls made up 45 percent of those receiving
secondary
education. Only after the mid-1960s did women commonly
leave Cyprus
to receive higher education. In the 1980s, women made up
about 32
percent of those studying abroad.
Cyprus had long had a high degree of female
participation in
the work force. In the period 1960-85, women's share of
the work
force rose only slightly, from 40.8 percent to 42.2
percent.
However, there were great changes in where women worked.
Women's
share of the urban work force rose from 22 percent to 41
percent,
while their share of the rural work force fell from 51
percent to
44.4 percent. The decline in rural areas stemmed from the
overall
shift away from agricultural work, where women's
contribution had
always been vital, to employment in urban occupations.
Cypriot women enjoyed the same rights to social welfare
as men
in such matters as social security payments, unemployment
compensation, vacation time, and other common social
provisions. In
addition, after 1985 women benefited from special
protective
legislation that provided them with marriage grants and
with
maternity grants that, paid them 75 percent of their
insurable
earnings. Still, a large number of women, the
self-employed and
unpaid family workers on farms, were not covered by the
Social
Insurance Scheme
(see Health and Welfare
, this ch.). These
women
constituted 28 percent of the economically active female
population.
In 1985 the Republic of Cyprus ratified the United
Nations
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination
against Women. Despite ratification of this agreement, as
of late
1990 there was no legislation in the Republic of Cyprus
that
guaranteed the right to equal pay for work of equal value,
nor the
right of women to the same employment opportunities.
The occupational segregation of the sexes was still
persistent
in Cyprus at the beginning of the 1990s. Even though the
participation of women in clerical jobs had more than
doubled since
the late 1970s, only one woman in fifteen was in an
administrative
or managerial position in 1985. Women's share of
professional jobs
increased to 39 percent by the mid-1980s, compared with 36
percent
ten years earlier, but these jobs were concentrated in
medicine and
teaching, where women had traditionally found employment.
In fields
where men were dominant, women's share of professional
positions
amounted to only 11 percent, up from 8 percent in 1976. In
the
fields where women were dominant, men took just under half
the
professional positions.
Although most Cypriot women worked outside the home,
they were
expected to fulfill the traditional domestic roles of
housewife and
mother. They could expect little help from their spouses,
for most
Cypriot men were not ready to accept any domestic duties,
and most
women did not expect them to behave otherwise.
Nonetheless, even
women with full-time jobs were judged by the traditional
standards
of whether they kept a clean house and provided daily hot
meals.
Moreover, even at the beginning of the 1990s, Cypriot
women
were still burdened with the expectation of safeguarding
the honor
of the family. According to tradition, a woman's duty was
to
protect herself against all criticism of sexual immodesty.
A study
carried out in a farming community in the mid-1970s found
that
women were still expected to avoid any social contact with
men that
could be construed to have a sexual content. An expressed
desire
for male society was seen to reflect poorly on a woman's
honor, and
virginity was seen by many villagers, both men and women,
to be a
precondition for marriage. The honor of a family, that is,
the
sense of dignity of its male members, depended on the
sexual
modesty and virtue of its women. These traditional
attitudes have
waned somewhat in recent decades, especially in urban
areas, but
were still prevalent in the early 1990s. Another
indication of the
conservative nature of Greek Cypriot society at the
beginning of
the 1990s was that the feminist movement in Cyprus was
often the
object of ridicule from both sexes. Nevertheless, women's
increasing economic independence was a force for
liberation in all
sections of the population.
Data as of January 1991
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