Cyprus’s ombudswoman and education minister have condemned a teachers’ union leader after he highlighted that a woman was changing education legislation for the first time in 50 years.
Education Minister Athena Michaelidou said the comment was disappointing and had no place in the education sector. “Education is the place par excellence for combating stereotypes related to sexism and every form of disrespect,” she said on ANT1’s Mera Mesimeri programme.
Michaelidou questioned how the president of a major trade union organisation could express himself in such a way, adding that she sees teachers’ reactions and knows first-hand that they work systematically for gender equality and mutual respect.
The controversy centres on comments made by OELMEK President Demetris Taliadoros during a television programme on Monday, in which he said some people wanted to claim that “for the first time a woman was found to change the legislation after 50 years” in reference to the education minister.
Michaelidou said Taliadoros’s refusal to retract the comment was “even more problematic”. “When we discuss such issues, one would expect that we would have arguments and not resort to such comments,” she said.
Ombudswoman Maria Stylianou-Lottides also responded in a written statement, saying: “In 2025, after Gandhi, Thatcher, Meloni, after two women are at the helm of the European Union, Mr Taliadoros came to expose the truth that was well hidden under the festive wrapping of equality.”
She said that behind every insult, attack and attempt to break resistance in the pursuit of justice, dialogue, professionalism and change, “ideals are hidden much higher than a worry bead spinning in the fingers with masculine confidence”.
Stylianou-Lottides noted that even 40 years after Cyprus ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985, and five years after the 2020 law combating sexism and online sexism, historically unequal power relations between men and women not only continue to exist but any attempt to dismantle them meets resistance from “leadership interests”.
To break these interests, the ombudswoman added, allies are needed regardless of colour and party affiliation, regardless of gender, regardless of petty political expediency. “It requires progress for all and equality that is not limited to the fancy wrapping of an empty box, it requires actions and resistance for the genuine protection of human rights, and parliament now has the floor representing all of us,” she concluded.
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