Women’s History in Greece through The Ladies’ Journal of Kallirhoe Siganou-Parren:
Class, National Identity, and Reformist Activism
in the Formation of Women’s Associations (1887–1917)
Marina Bantiou
University of Peloponnese
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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 317-350 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.317
This paper investigates how The Ladies’ Journal (Efimeris ton Kyrion), edited by Kallirhoe Siganou-Parren between 1887 and 1917, constructed a gendered historical consciousness and mobilized national history as a vehicle for women’s civic inclusion in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greece. Through a qualitative content and discourse analysis of selected articles from the journal’s complete digitized archive, the study examines how Parren strategically invoked historical female figures, from classical Antiquity to the Greek War of Independence and the Byzantine era, to legitimize women’s public roles within a framework of patriotic maternalism and bourgeois respectability. These representations restored women to history and actively recast historical memory as a tool for moral instruction, civic pedagogy, and reformist activism. While rooted in nationalist ideology, the journal’s narratives also reflected transnational influences through Parren’s engagement with international feminist networks and suffrage congresses. The article argues that this hybrid mode of popular historiography simultaneously enabled middle-class women’s symbolic integration into the nation and reinforced prevailing class and gender hierarchies. Ultimately, it situates The Ladies’ Journal as a formative site for the articulation of women’s associative practices and reformist discourse, while also critically assessing its role in shaping the terms and limits of female civic identity.
Keywords: women’s history in Greece, Kallirhoe Parren, Ephimeris ton Kyrion, feminist historiography, Greek women’s associations, maternalism, Greek feminist movement