Greek women’s rights pioneer Papandreou dies at 102

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Margaret Papandreou, a US-born trailblazer for women’s rights in Greece who was a wife of one prime minister and mother of another, died on Friday at the age of 102, officials said.

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Greek President Constantine Tassoulas said Papandreou “supported and inspired the reform of family law, the breakthrough in social and political rights, and the modernisation of women’s status in Greek society.”

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Papandreou was also active against cancer, tuberculosis and polio, he said.

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“She loved Greece deeply. She was the wife of a Prime Minister and the mother of a Prime Minister, but above all an active citizen, as she treated public affairs as her own,” Tassoulas said.

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According to local media reports, Papandreou died at home in Athens a few days short of her 103rd birthday.

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Born Margaret Chant in Oak Park, Illinois in 1923, she met Greek socialist politician Andreas Papandreou while he taught economics at Harvard University. The couple married in 1951.

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A University of Minnesota graduate, she was a founding member of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) that would dominate Greek politics in the years after the fall of the country’s dictatorship in 1974.

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After her husband was elected Greek prime minister in 1981, Papandreou was instrumental in promoting groundbreaking laws that abolished dowry, legalised abortion and established civil marriage.

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She was a founding member of the Women’s Union of Greece in 1976 and served as its chairman for several years.

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Affectionately known as Margarita to most Greeks, she gained additional popularity after her husband divorced her in 1989 to marry an air hostess.

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“I’ll always treasure that portion of my life I had with Andreas. I do not want to spoil it with thoughts of revenge,” she told the Los Angeles Times at the time.

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Papandreou had four children, including former prime minister George Papandreou, who led Greece from 2009-2011, at the outset of the country’s decade-long debt crisis.

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AFP

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