A new study on gender equality in Greece finds that women’s gains in education and employment still collide with a stubborn penalty attached to motherhood and unpaid care.
The diaNEOsis study, by Antigoni Lyberaki, Katerina Glyniadaki and Thomas Georgiadis, brings together Greek and European data spanning five decades. Its central finding is that formal progress has not dismantled the division of labor inside the home or the assumptions that follow women into the workplace.
Women’s employment among Greeks aged 20 to 64 reached 59.9 percent in 2024, but Greece still ranked 26th among the EU’s 27 members. The employment gap between men and women was 18.8 percentage points, compared with 10 points across the bloc. Greece’s hourly gender pay gap was 13.4 percent, above the EU average of 11.1 percent.
Those figures sit uneasily beside Greece’s rise in female managers and the high educational attainment of younger women. Eurostat data previously showed that 42.8 percent of young adults in Greece have tertiary education, with women ahead of men.
Unpaid care drives the motherhood penalty in Greece
Care work is the hinge between progress and inequality. Nearly one in four economically inactive Greek women aged 20 to 64 cited care responsibilities as the reason they were not seeking paid work in 2023, according to the study. In households with children, women reported daily care at much higher rates than men. Women also continued to spend substantially more time on housework, even when both partners were employed.
This produces what researchers call a motherhood penalty: careers slow, earnings fall behind and some women leave the labor market altogether. The gap does not arise from one rule or one employer. It accumulates through interrupted employment, reduced hours, limited access to senior roles and the expectation that mothers will absorb family responsibilities.
The burden is particularly significant as Greece’s birth rate has fallen to a postwar low. Policies that encourage families without changing who performs unpaid care can leave women carrying both the demographic pressure and its professional cost.
New pay rules address one part of the gap
Greece introduced new pay-transparency rules on November 1 as part of the EU salary-disclosure framework. Employers must provide salary information before the first interview, maintain objective pay structures and avoid asking applicants about previous salaries. Workers can also request information comparing pay for the same or equivalent work. The Labor Ministry says employers may have to conduct a joint pay assessment when an unjustified gender gap of at least 5 percent persists.
The diaNEOsis authors argue that the response must reach beyond wages. Their recommendations include affordable, high-quality care services, stronger support for both parents to take leave, more transparent promotion systems and better sex-disaggregated data. They also call for sustained attention to women’s representation in politics and corporate leadership.
Women held 27 percent of seats on listed-company boards in Greece in 2025, below the EU average of 35 percent, while their share in Parliament stood at 23 percent. The study presents these gaps as connected: when care limits women’s time and income, it also narrows the pool of people able to compete for positions of influence.
