Vote of confidence for Greek women
More than half of Greeks would happily vote for a woman as prime minister or president, according to figures released yesterday to mark International Women’s Day, while experts said that women still suffer discrimination in a number of fields. A survey conducted by the Research Center for Gender Equality (KETHI) found that 54.2 percent of respondents would vote for a woman prime minister and 51.5 percent would have no problem in casting their ballot in favor of a female president. A woman has never held these posts. Dora Bakoyannis is Greece’s first woman foreign minister and Anna Psarouda-Benaki is the first female parliament speaker. KETHI’s poll found that the majority of people questioned believe that women politicians are more honest and effective than their male counterparts. Quoting figures supplied by the National Statistics Service, the civil servant’s union ADEDY highlighted the fact that unemployment among men is only 5 percent whereas it is 13 percent among women. The union also underlined that a quarter of women aged 15 to 29 are out of work. «Economic disparity is growing and working women… are experiencing the greatest discrimination and the bulk of the increasing social problems,» said ADEDY. Meanwhile, women academics said that they are often the victims of sexism. The Periktioni Network of Women Researchers said that 27 percent of university teaching staff comprises women, as does 35 percent of research staff in the 50 top public research bodies. However, men still dominate in the teaching of sciences and mathematics. Women are mostly restricted to social and humanities subjects. Nearly one in three humanities teachers at universities is a woman, while only 6.5 percent of science teachers are women.
