ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses symbolic boundaries and how they materialise in space as perceived, experienced, and challenged by women in the Greek countryside. Using ethnographic, biographical, and anthropological data, it investigates the relationship between cultural values and the (im)possibility for women to negotiate physical and symbolic barriers in the mountainous rural part of Crete. It examines how women recognise, reflect on, and act on these boundaries from a young age, using personal accounts, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation in various social contexts in the villages. Despite legislative advances in gender equality, the research findings show that social control in rural areas continues to shape everyday life to a great extent through the imposition of specific attitudes, moralities, and emotions that preserve gender stereotypes and boundaries. The chapter reveals the ambiguities and inconsistencies of female experience in Europe as lived from its margins.
