Cypriot women were greatly affected by changes in the wake of World War II, as they received expanded access to education and increased participation in the national workforce.
[6] A study carried out in a farming community in the mid-1970s found that women were still expected to avoid any social contact with men that could be construed to have a sexual context.
[6] An expressed desire for male company was seen to reflect poorly on a woman's honor, and virginity was seen by many villagers, both men and women, to be a precondition for marriage.
[6] The honor of a family, that is, the sense of dignity of its male members, depended on the sexual modesty and virtue of its women.
[6] Another indication of the conservative nature of Greek Cypriot society at the beginning of the 1990s was that the feminist movement in Cyprus was often the object of ridicule from both sexes.
[6] The decline in rural areas stemmed from the overall shift away from agricultural work, where women's contribution had always been vital, to employment in urban occupations.
[6] Even though the participation of women in clerical jobs had more than doubled since the late 1970s, only one woman in fifteen was in an administrative or managerial position in 1985.
[10] The equal pay-equal work principal would help to solve this problem, but the women are generally in lower positions then men resulting in the unequal pay.
[6] In addition, after 1985 women benefited from special protective legislation that provided them with marriage and maternity grants that paid them 75 percent of their insurable earnings.
[6] Still, a large number of women, including the self-employed and unpaid family workers on farms, were not covered by the Social Insurance Scheme.
[6] In 1985, the Republic of Cyprus ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
[11] In May 1931 the male politician Kyriakos Rossides suggested the introduction of women's suffrage in the Legislative Council with the argument that women paid taxes and most (Western) countries had already introduced the reform, but the male politicians voted down the reform with the argument that not even all men had suffrage yet, and the following year, the British dissolved the Cypriot Legislative Council, and the issue was put on hold.
Women who possess characteristics such as having little to no education, reside in Urban areas, are of older age, and struggle financially are said to be prone to domestic violence.
The annual report from Association of the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family reveals that out of a total of 1051 incidents, 815 of them include women between the ages of 41-50 who were abused.