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The unceremonious sacking on Monday of the Minister for Commerce, Industry and Tourism, Praxoulla Antoniadou-Kyriacou, served as an unfortunate proof that there is no place in this enlightened EU country for ambitious women.
In a written statement on Monday, Antoniadou made it clear that she had not resigned as reported, and that the president had not told her in person that her services were no longer required. Had he been a younger man, he might simply have dumped her on Facebook.
One might argue that Antoniadou’s ouster was just the consequence of the dirty politics in which she chose to immerse herself. She is the leader of an already tiny political party, the United Democrats, which got even smaller when her faction supported Demetris Christofias for the presidency, while the other faction stuck with Costas Themistocleous, who gained less than a thousand votes.
It is said that the men who really run the United Democrats only let Antoniadou win the leadership of the party when they had no further use for it. With no substantial political base and no support from the big hitters from her own party either, Antoniadou was expendable.
One might also argue that she was not the only woman in the cabinet. We have the non-aligned foreign minister, Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis and the AKEL labour minister, Sotiroula Charalambous. The female head-count will be preserved with the entry of another AKEL member, Eleni Mavrou, former mayor of Nicosia, as interior minister.
But therein lies the difference. Markoullis is not a politician. Before serving as foreign minister she spent many years as a senior official on the “Cyprus problem” desk in the foreign ministry. She is the foreign ministry equivalent of a technocrat, having spent her entire professional life as a loyal servant. She is simply not the type to make waves.
The other two women in the cabinet are loyal AKEL party members, allowed to get so far but no further. They toe the party line and though personally highly popular they are careful not to take the limelight away from the boys.
But two other factors have made Antoniadou particularly vulnerable. First, she has her own ideas and is not afraid to voice them. These include her open support for rapprochement with Turkish Cypriots, her genuine belief in the better future of a reunited Cyprus, and her faith, despite all the odds, that a solution is still attainable.
This made her the butt of the worst insults the House of Representatives has ever witnessed, with some MPs calling her the “Minister of Commerce and Turkey”. It is also reported that when one MP was asked why he insisted on referring to the Minister as “Praxoulla” but the Director of the Energy Service, Antoniadou’s bête noir, Solon Kassinis, as “Mr Kassinis”, he said it was because “some people have a higher carat”.
No minister has ever been treated with such disdain by politicians and media alike, even those who ran our economy into the dustbin with their hands over their eyes.
One wonders whether Antoniadou’s insistence on playing by the EU rulebook for the second gas licensing round also made her vulnerable. Somewhat fortunately for those with their eyes on 7 trillion brown envelopes, the combination of Turkey’s objections and the involvement of all the oil majors in Turkey’s oil and gas business has ruled out any bids from companies located in countries that are parties to the OECD’s anti-bribery convention.
But even if Antoniadou had not been in charge of the ministry with the biggest cookie jar, there is another reason why they would always have made her life difficult. And that is because she is a woman with ambition.
In countries like the US, this is celebrated. But here on the island of Aphrodite, women are to be seen not heard. Being ambitious is still considered somehow distasteful.
So a word for the young ambitious females of Cyprus. Get back in the kitchen. Or get the Hell out of here!
Between 2008 and 2010 Praxoulla Antoniadou-Kyriacou, Ozlem Oguz and Fiona Mullen co-authored three reports on the economic opportunities of a Cyprus settlement. www.prio.no/cyprus/publications
