At a recent event on “Gender in Higher Education,” organised by the University of Cyprus UNESCO Chair for Gender Equality at the Nicosia campus on December 11, 2024, I was struck by Associate Professor Miranda Christou’s observation that “Cyprus leads in higher education access, with 70.1% of Cypriot women aged 25-34 holding university degrees in 2023—the highest percentage in Europe”.
Her comment took me back some fifteen years, to a letter I received from Yannis V. in response to one of my newspaper columns.
“Dear Mr. Demetriou”, he wrote, “your article touches upon a particularly sensitive issue for men, not just in Cyprus and Greece, but across the globe, regardless of culture or civilisation.
Let me share my experience: My former girlfriend wanted to pursue her doctorate, and for our relationship to continue, I would have had to move to her university town and work in restaurants. The relationship ended precisely at that point. I could never have lived in her shadow.
Do I have an inferiority complex? I’m not sure. What I do know is that I saw my role being erased. History shows us great men with wives who lived in their shadow and helped make them great. The same history has recorded very few cases of unknown men living in the shadow of great women.
Mind you, I’m not suggesting women don’t have the right to do as they please. I believe quite the opposite. I simply think these women won’t create what we call a ‘traditional family’. Yours sincerely, Yannis V.”.
As I listened to the discussion at the campus, I recalled this correspondent, his girlfriend pursuing her doctorate, and how he ended their relationship because, as he wrote, “he could never live in her shadow”.
In my response, I had urged him to consider that he left the relationship because he was apparently more troubled by her shadow—or rather, the shadow of her impending doctorate—than he was invested in her as a person.
As the dialogue unfolded in the university hall, I felt that Yannis V.’s letter shed new light on old male insecurities that continue to be fed by fixations and reproduced, not in the real world, but within the shadows.
