In the north of the Aegean island of Karpathos, the hilltop village of Olympos is home to one of the few matriarchal societies in Greece that resist tourism and standardization of lifestyle.
In his workshop in a narrow street of Olympos with fewer than 300 inhabitants, Rigopoula Pavlidis works on his sewing machine.
“The women are in charge here!” she proudly announces. Giannis, the husband, nods while painting icons.
“My husband doesn’t know how to do anything without me, not even his tax return,” laughs the man in his mid-sixties.
At the heart of society, the women of Olympos play a central role that dates back to a system of inheritance that dates back to Byzantine times.
Despite the Ottoman occupation from 1538 and the Italian presence on the island between 1912 and 1944, Olympos retains its peculiarities.
Isolated from the rest of the island, this village resisted change until a paved road was built in the 1980s.
Now thousands of tourists flock to the picturesque heights every summer.
“This inheritance system was very advanced compared to the rest of Greece. The mother’s inheritance went to the eldest daughter,” explains Giorgos Tsampanakis, a historian from the village of this island between Crete and Rhodes in the southern Aegean.
The eldest daughter Rigopoula Pavlidis therefore inherited 700 olive trees.
“The families didn’t have enough wealth to share among all the children (…) And if we left the inheritance to the men, they would have wasted it!” she jokes.
After marriage, the men moved in with the women.
The predominance of women is also reflected in the transmission of first names.
“The eldest daughter took the maternal grandmother’s first name, unlike in the rest of Greece, where the paternal grandmother’s first name was carried over,” explains Giorgos Tsampanakis.
“Many women are still addressed by their mother’s last name and not their husband’s,” he adds.
Beginning in the 1950s, male emigration to the United States and other European countries forced women to tend their farms alone.
In Avlona, a farming village near Olympos, Anna Lentakis, 67, enthusiastically picks artichokes to prepare her organic omelette, which she serves in her small canteen.
“We had no choice but to work (…) It was our only way to survive,” she recalls.
A few years ago she ran the tavern “Olympos” in the village of the same name. But now it is Marina, his eldest daughter, who has taken over the company.
“I like to say that the man is the head of the family and the woman is the neck. It is she who guides the man’s decisions,” Marina opens.
Anna, her daughter, is only 13 years old, but she knows that one day she will take the torch: “It is my grandmother’s legacy and I will be proud to take care of it!”
However, this inheritance system only benefits the elders of the family.
“The younger girls had to stay on the island to serve the older ones. A kind of social caste has emerged,” stresses Alain Chabloz, a member of the Geneva Geography Society who has studied the subject.
Giorgia Fourtina, the youngest of her family and unmarried, doesn’t find Olympos society all that progressive: “It’s a small society where a woman alone in a café is frowned upon,” she admits.
The women of Olympos wear traditional embroidered costumes consisting of floral aprons, a headscarf and leather boots.
True treasures, these clothes are part of the dowry.
It is also the women who bake the bread in the stone ovens.
Irini Chatzipapa, 50, is the youngest Olympos woman to still wear this set on a daily basis.
“I taught my daughter to embroider, but she doesn’t wear this costume except for the holidays, it doesn’t fit with modern life,” says the baker.
But his mother Sofia, 70, who is a master at holding her coffee, is concerned.
“Our costume just becomes folklore for the holidays… Our world is disappearing!” she laments.