Who we are

Callirhoe Parren (née Siganou)

Callirhoe Parren was born in 1859 or 1861 in Crete, in Platania Amariou Rethimnis. During the revolution of 1866-69, her family, along with many other Cretan refugees, fled to Athens. Callirhoe Parren studied, in turn, at Sourmeli School in Piraeus, at the Ecole des Soeurs de Saint Joseph de l’ Apparition, and at the Arsakeion School, from where she graduated with top marks in 1878. She then taught in Greek girls’ schools in Odessa and Adrianople.

On her return to Athens, she married Ioannis Parren, a journalist of French-English heritage from Constantinople, who was the founder of the Athens News Agency. Her interactions with the personages who visited her literary salon, her familiarity with the intellectual, political, and social currents of the time, and, in particular, her acquaintance with the world of journalism, had a decisive impact on her life:

I followed the conversations between the journalists and slowly the desire awoke in me again to write, as they did, not just for myself, but also for others.

Thus, with Parren as editor and with many select female collaborators, the Ladies’ Newspaper was born in March 1887, and was the first women’s publication in Greece. It had a large circulation (for example, 5000 copies in Greece and abroad in 1892), and was instrumental in actions for women’s rights (for example, by submitting a petition for women’s education signed by 2850 women to the Trikoupis government), but also in national actions (for example, the international campaign for the 1897 war, with the collaboration of the Association of Greek Women).

The thirty-year publication run of the Ladies’ Newspaper was interrupted by political instability in November 1917. Parren herself was absent from her activities from the autumn of 1917 to the autumn of 1918, as she was, according to reports, displaced to Hydra “for her political convictions”.

Parren’s writing work was extremely prolific: History of woman, 3 volumes (circulated in instalments from 1889); The life of a year. Letters of an Athenian Woman to a Parisian Woman (1898); The books of Dawn (a trilogy of novels): The emancipated woman (1900, reissued in 1999 by Ekati publications with an annex by Ang. Psarra, and also published in French in Journal de debats in 1907), The witch (1901) and The new contract (1902, also published in French in the Revue littéraire), The young woman (a three-act play, performed by Marika Kotopouli in 1907); The school of Aspasia (1908); The wilted lily (novel, 1909); and the unfinished work The white rose (which began to be published in early 1915). Her travel memoirs from Sweden, Russia, and the USA, which were published in the Ladies’ Newspaper, are also of particular note.

Parren’s positions and activism were defined by her belief in the need to secure education and work for women, as basic requirements for their intellectual and political equality and emancipation. She created the Sunday School for female workers and servants in 1889, the Aghia Ekaterini Asylum and the Incurable Patient Asylum in 1892, and was a key contributor to the creation of the Association of Greek Women in 1896, within which the Homemaking and Trade School operated. Bringing the voice of Greek women to international forums – and, conversely, the international pursuits and activism of women to Greece – she took part in women’s congresses in Paris in 1889, in Chicago in 1893, and in Paris in 1900 and 1914. In 1908, the Association of Greek Women participated in founding the National Council of Greek Women.