Margaret Papandreou, architect of Greek family law reform, dies at 102

Margaret Papandreou, the American-born former first lady of Greece who founded the Women's Union of Greece in 1975 and pressed Greek lawmakers to rewrite the country's family law, died on 18 September at her home in the Athens suburb of Palaio Faliro at the age of 102.

We've had enough of being second-class citizens, always pushed to the margin.

Her family announced the death, The Daily Beast reported on 8 October, in an account that described her as having led the charge for lasting feminist reforms in Greece. She used those words in 1981, the year she became the spouse of the Greek prime minister, a role she held until June 1989. No cause of death has been reported.

The laws she pushed through

In 1983, with her husband Andreas Papandreou serving as prime minister, she successfully pushed lawmakers to pass legislation modernizing women's roles on several fronts, according to The Daily Beast. The measures created divorce by mutual consent, allowed women to keep their last names after marriage, abolished dowries and made single mothers the legal guardians of their children. The same package let women start businesses and travel abroad with their children without their husband's permission.

The 1983 law also gave mothers rights equal to fathers' over their children.

Greece established civil marriage in 1982 and legalized abortion in 1986.

Greek President Constantine Tassoulas issued a statement after her death. He said she had supported and inspired the reform of family law, the breakthrough in social and political rights and the modernization of women's status in Greek society.

Beginning largely with her founding of the Women's Union of Greece in 1975, Papandreou was an architect of several women's rights efforts, The Daily Beast reported.

She led the Women's Union as its president for its first eight years, and she wrote several books and worked as a columnist.

From Oak Park to Athens

She was born Margaret Esther Chant in Oak Park, Illinois, on 30 September 1923 and grew up in Elmhurst, Illinois, according to the English-language Wikipedia entry on her life. She was the eldest of five children of Douglas Chant, who lived from 1896 to 1981, and Hulda Anne Pfund Chant, who lived from 1893 to 1986. Her father's parents came from England and her mother's from Switzerland.

She first studied journalism and then took a master's degree in public health at the University of Minnesota. During those master's studies, in 1948, she met Andreas Papandreou in a dentist's waiting room.

They married on 30 August 1951 and lived first in Minnesota and later in California, where Andreas Papandreou was chair of the department of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. They had four children, among them George and Nikos.

The family settled in Greece for good in 1961.

Spouse of the prime minister

Andreas Papandreou served as prime minister from 1981 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1996. His wife's formal role as the prime minister's spouse ran from 21 October 1981 until the divorce in June 1989. She was a member of PASOK.

In June 1989 she agreed to grant a divorce so that Andreas Papandreou could marry Dimitra Liani. An Athens court granted the divorce that month, ending a marriage of 38 years.

Two of their four children went into politics, including George Papandreou, who was prime minister from 2009 to 2011, The Daily Beast reported.

Nikos Papandreou, another of the four, has been a member of the European Parliament since 2023.

Papandreou and the Lagarde list

In December 2012 the Greek newspapers To Vima and Proto Thema published claims that Margaret Papandreou owned one of the accounts on the Lagarde list, according to the Wikipedia entry on her life. She filed a lawsuit.

In 2014 the Economic Crimes Enforcement Agency, known in Greece as SDOE, replied to her in a letter stating that, following an investigation carried out in the context of the lawsuit she had filed, her name was not included on the Lagarde list. The letter was signed by the agency's special secretary, Stylianos Stasinopoulos.

The Lagarde list was a roster of Greek holders of Swiss bank accounts handed to Greek authorities.

In Greece she was known as Margarita Papandreou, the Greek form of her first name, and the Wikipedia entry on her life describes her as an American and Greek women's rights activist and writer.

Papandreou turned 100 on 30 September 2023.

She died at her home in Palaio Faliro on the morning of 18 September 2026, 12 days short of her 103rd birthday.

The funeral and the Aegean

Her civil funeral took place two days after her death, on 20 September, at the First Cemetery of Athens.

Her body was cremated the next day and her ashes were scattered in the Aegean Sea, in accordance with her wishes.