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In other cases as a precondition for recruitment, military service is
mentioned in that case given that it is obligatory for men and not
for women. Men got a number of points by definition because of the
military service while women didn’t get these points, so again they
were discrimination against but because this precondition could not
apply to them.

Other cases have to do with common height standards or common
athletic performance when this is required for recruitment while
common experience and also science shows that there are different
levels of achievement. Now in many cases this is indirect discrimination
because it appears as if we have the same height requirements but if
90% of women are excluded by this common height requirement in
reality we have discrimination.

In the second group this is the social sphere, the respecting equality
has to do often with the way the period of maternity is treated and
everything has to do with family. There I can say that we have also
cases, complaints coming from men who wants to benefit from an
equal status within the family in terms of leave of absence, parental
leave etc. But what is I think more typical is that during this maternity
period women are much more vulnerable in terms of dismissals and
the Greek and European legislation protects women from day one
even if they themselves are not aware of their pregnancy. So, if they 3 rd INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTIONS
are dismissed during this period dismissal has to be evoked or else
the employer and this time we are talking about the private sector will
have to pay a fine and of course the court are always the next step.
Often, we have degrading behavior of the part of employers against
women. The moment they announce that they are pregnant the
employers starts treating them in a harder way giving them harder
work to do possibly in order to make them resign. So, in all these
cases the ombudsman intervenes and follows what the complaints or
the recourses to the labor inspectorate and the ombudsman has a
responsibility for the final report on the case. In many cases after the
meeting with the employers and the employees in the framework of
the labor inspectorate the employer revokes the dismissal and there
are very few cases where they do insist. Of course, employers can
pretend that they have financial problems, there are many ways, many
excuses but again the ombudsman can investigate if these financial

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