Greek women’s rights pioneer Papandreou dies at 102

Margaret Papandreou Photo: Web

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.

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.”

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

“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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

“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.

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.