Gender-Related Discourses and Representations of Cultural Specificity in Nineteenth-Century and Twentieth-Century Greece

The nineteenth-century discourse on women's education in Greece was a part of a more general nationalist ideology aimed at promoting Greece's westernization. Arguments put forth by members of the educated elite concerning the quantity, form, and content of girls' schooling generally appealed to European examples. Curiously, many of this discourse's central ideas about the nature and callings of womanhood appear to be strikingly similar to gender-related ideas documented by ethnographers, and usually considered fundamental features of local communities or of Greek culture generally. The possible analogies and historical connections between nineteenth- and twentieth-century gender-related ideas suggest that ethnographers have overemphasized the Greeks' own sense of cultural specificity vis-à-vis "Europeans." Conversely, they have underestimated the extent to which Greeks see themselves through a "European" perspective and internalize a "European" identity.