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ABSTRACT
This article examines the far-right discourses on gender in Greece focusing on two historical moments, namely the period between 1936 and 1941 when Greece was governed by the authoritarian regime of general Ioannis Metaxas, and the period between 2010 and 2022 which was defined by the Greek-government debt crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2021-2022 global energy crisis. It aims to demonstrate the instrumental logic lurking behind the gender rhetoric employed by the Far Right and bring to the fore both points of convergence and divergence. With regards to the Metaxas regime the article discusses the contradictions marking the official propaganda on women which seems to oscillate between deeply rooted conservative ideas on women’s role on the one hand, and the promotion of new ideals of femininity on the other hand. Fast-forward to today, the article examines the ways gender issues are manipulated by the emerging Alt Right in Greece. Via the theoretical lens of femonationalism and homonationalism, the article brings to the fore the contradictions between the breakthroughs with regards to feminist and LGBTQI demands on the one hand, and the systematic attempts to reintroduce an ultra-conservative agenda with regards to gender issues in Greece on the other hand.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. On the strained relationship between the male and female divisions of the Organization and the formers’ attempts to undermine the latter, see Confidential Report, 27/01/1940, Regional Administration of Women of Ioannina, File 1, op. cit.; Report of Proceedings, 11/08/1939, Regional Administration of Women of Preveza, File 1, ibid; Report of Proceedings, 22/04/1940, Regional Administration of Women of Messinia, File 2, ibid; Report of Proceedings, 21/08/1939, Female Regional Administration of Lesvos, File 8, ibid; Report of Proceedings, 03/12/1940, Regional Administration of Women of Thessaloniki, File 11, ibid.
2. Rosa Vasilaki (2008). “Gender, memory and politics: Women in Metaxian society.” Historica 26/48, pp. 79–102). For a history of the feminist movement in Greece see Efi Avdela & Angelika Psarra (ed.) Feminism in interwar Greece. An anthology. Athens: Gnosi, 1985; Eleni Varika (1987). The Rebellion of the Ladies. The Genesis of a Feminist Consciousness in Greece. Athens: Emporiki Bank Research and Education Foundation; Angelika Psarra (1988). “Feminists, Socialists, Communists. Women and politics in the interwar period.” In George Mavrogordatos, Christos Chatziiosif (ed.) Venizelism ideology and bourgeois modernization. Heraklion: University of Crete Publications, pp. 67–82. For the fascination exerted by National Socialist and fascist ideas on feminist circles, see Rita Thalmann (1990). Between emancipation and nationalism. La presse féminine d’Europe 1914–1945. Deuxtemps Tierce.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rosa Vasilaki
Rosa Vasilaki holds a PhD in History from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Bristol. She is the founder of DISSENSUS-social research and the co-coordinator of the seminar series Politics of Liberation (both funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung). She is an Adjunct Professor of sociology at the College Year in Athens (CYA). Her research interests revolve around the sociology of violence (political, religious and epistemological). In 2021 she co-edited the volume “Mainstreaming the Far Right in Greece: Gender, Media, Armed Forces and the Church”. Her most recent publication is the article “Women and Femininity under the Metaxas Regime in Greece”, Fascism 11 (2022).
George Souvlis
George Souvlis holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute. He currently teaches at the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Ioannina. He is also a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of Crete. His research interest lie in the intersection between the fields of historical sociology and intellectual history. Recently, he co-edited a special issue focused the Metaxas regime published by the journal Fascism and he is the co-editor of Back to the ‘30’s? Crisis, Repetition and Transition in the 20th and 21th centuries (Pagrave) and Radical Journalism: Resurgence, Reform, Reaction (Routledge).