ABSTRACT
This contribution discusses twentieth century legal reforms concerning gender equality in Greece and the European Union, which were mainly initiated in the first half of the twentieth century by political elites and legal specialists (internal legal culture) with the contribution to some extent of the Greek feminist movement. Only after the restoration of democracy in the mid-1970s and Greece’s EU membership in the early 1980s, did a rapid change in the general public’s mentalities, conceptions, and beliefs towards gender equality law (external legal culture) occur. It was domestic law that perpetuated the centuries long cultural perception of female inferiority, and was used to maintain political exclusion of women in the first half of the twentieth century, and it was EU law as an expedient of change that transformed the legal culture in Greece in the late twentieth century. Therefore, it can be argued that Greece followed an uncommon trajectory: whereas in matters of gender equality legal structures usually follow the demands of grassroots movements and social changes, in Greece gender equality law led the way and preceded social transformation.
