Patrick Comerford
At the north or west end of Eleftheríou Venizélou street in Rethymnon, facing the Old Harbour and a few steps away from the old town beach, a modern sculpture that almost serves as a traffic roundabout, celebrates the pioneering Greek feminist Kalliroi Siganou Parren (1861-1940), who was originally from Rethymnon.
Kalliroi Siganou Parren (Καλλιρρόη Σιγανού Παρρέν) launched the feminist movement in Greece and was a journalist and writer in the late 19th and early 20th century. She was an educator, publisher, journalist, novelist and playwright, and she was the key figure at the beginning of the feminist movement and the demand for women’s rights in Greece. Her persistent and tenacious campaigning laid the foundations for many women’s rights that came much later in Greece.
Kalliroi Siganou Parren was born in Platania in the Amari valley, about 40 km south of Rethymnon in 1859 into a wealthy family. During the Cretan rebellion in 1866, Arkadi Monastery, half way between Rethymnon and her family home, was destroyed in a violent encounter. Her family fled to Athens, where her father Stylianos Siganos chaired the Committee of Cretan Refugees.
Kalliroi attended the Soumerli School in Piraeus and then the French School in Athens run by nuns. She distinguished herself at the Arsakeio School and in 1878 she was appointed to a teaching position at the Greek School of Educational Studies in Adrianoupoli, present-day Edirne in Turkey. She then spent two years teaching at the Greek-rum girls’ school in Odessa.
She returned to Athens to marry Jean (Ioannis) Parrén, a French-English journalist from Istanbul (Constantinople) who founded the Athenian News Agency.
Kalliroi Siganou Parren was the first person to introduce feminist principles to Greece. She believed the liberation of women could be achieved through enlightenment, and believed in the value of newspaper reports and features. But she could not achieve these aims through already existing newspapers, she founded her own weekly Women's Newspaper (Efimeris ton Kyrion)
The first edition was published on 8 March 1887 with two print tuns and the first 10,000 copies were an immediate sell-out within a few hours in Athens, then a city of 65.000 people. She faced strong opposition from other editors of other newspapers, who attacked her and called her ‘the anarchist’.
The organisations Kalliroi founded included a Sunday school to teach needy women and girls reading, writing and elementary arithmetic (1890), the Agia Aikaterini (Saint Catherine) Home (1895), the Union for Liberation of Women (1896), and the Greek Women’s Union (1896), with branches for education and housework and one for war widows and orphans.
Her campaign for the right of women to enter higher education had a breakthrough in 1895, when the first woman was enrolled as a medical student at the university in Athens. Sadly, the student faced so much harassment that she died by suicide.
She achieved a reduction in working hours in dressmakers’ workrooms in 1900, and a ban on night work and protection for children.
Her novels were first published in her newspaper under the pen name Maia, and were later published as three books: I Hirafetimeni (The Emancipated Woman), 1900; I Magissa (The Enchantress), 1901; and To Neon Symvoleon (The New Contract), 1902. The books about the struggle of Greek women for self-accomplishment and emancipation, and together they form a trilogy, Ta Vivlia tis Avyis (The Books of Dawn).
Her trilogy was well received and critics Grigorios Xenopoulos and Kostis Palamas spoke of it as providing a generous contribution to the development of the Greek social novel. Palamas even wrote a famous poem about her. In addition, she wrote A History of Greek Women from 1650 to 1860, in Greek, and ran a literary salon she called ‘literary Saturdays.’
Her passion for the preservation of Greek customs and traditions, led her to create the Lyceum of Greek Women (Lykeio ton Ellinidon) in 1911. The school began during the Balkan Wars to record, teach and present traditional Greek dances. The school later opened branches throughout Greece and still exists.
She continued to edit the Women’s Newspaper for 31 years until November 1917, when she was exiled by the government of Eleftherios Venizelos to the island of Hydra because she supported the monarchy and because she opposed Greece’s involvement in World War I on the side of the allies.
She was one of the founding members of the Little Entente of Women, formed in 1923 to unite women throughout the Balkans, and served as president of the Greek Chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom before the outbreak of World War II.
When Kalliroi Siganou Parren died in Athens on 15 January 1940 after a stroke, she left a rich literary legacy and a legacy of campaigning for women’s fundamental rights in Greece. She was the first Greek woman to be buried at public expense, in recognition of her contribution to the Greek nation.
The path to full voting rights was marked by incremental achievements. Women over 30 year who could read and write s old gained the right to vote in municipal elections in 1930. Women who had taken part in the resistance during World War II were granted limited voting rights in 1949.
But women in Greece did not gain full and equal voting rights until 28 May 1952, when Law 2159 granted Greek women the right to vote and stand as candidates in parliamentary elections. It was a milestone achieved after decades of feminist activism, and over 12 years after the death of Kalliroi Siganou Parren.
The Municipality of Athens unveiled a bust of her in the First Cemetery of Athens in 1992. Ironically, her sculpture stands on the boulevard named after Eleftherios Venizelos, the Cretan-born prime minister who sent her internal exile on Hydra.
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