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Women's Struggle: An old fashioned title for a modern feminist
magazine
By Xanthi Petrinioti*
The magazine O Agonas tis Gynaikas (Women's Struggle) is the longest
- surviving feminist periodical publication in Greece (and possibly
in Europe). The first issue circulated as a monthly bulletin of
the Greek League for Women's Rights in August - September 1923.
On its cover page, under the title, it was written in bold lettering
and in demotic Greek: "We demand the same political, civil
and economic rights for women and men".
The current (bi-annual) issue (No. 80) of the magazine's third period
of publication will circulate in June 2006. During these 82 years
its publication ceased twice, in 1936 and in 1967, closely following
the vicissitudes of Greek political history. June 1936 was the date
of the last issue of this first period of the magazine's publication,
that of the inter-war years. That is, the period from 1920 when
the League for Women's Rights was founded by Avra Theodoropoulou
and Maria Negreponti and the participation of Maria Svolou, Rosa
Imvrioti and Elleni Korrylou (better known under the pen name Alkis
Thryllos) until it was closed down by order of the Police and its
archives seized, on August 5, 1936, one day after the establishment
of the Metaxa dictatorship.
During this first period (1920-36) of radical feminism, the League
had published over 190 issues of the magazine, the frequency of
publication varying from 6 per annum (during the period 1932-36)
to about 24 per annum during years when the League's activities
(public meetings, resolutions, submission of reports, petitions
to government officials and political party leaders) reached a peak
in concerted efforts to secure voting rights for Greek women.
The League's publication was not the first women's magazine with
feminist aspirations. It was preceded by the magazine I Efimeris
ton Kyrion (The Ladies' Journal) published by Kallirhoe Parrin in
1887 and by the (monthly) bulletin Ellinis (Greek woman), the official
publication of the National Council of Greek Women (an umbrella
organization uniting several women's groups), which was published
from 1921 to 1940.
The founding of the League in 1920 represented, however, a break
with the many women's organizations operating already in Greece
which were devoted to welfare work and educational or cultural activities,
because the League was the first exclusively feminist organization
established in Greece with a definitive agenda to attain economic,
civil and, above all, political rights for women. The name chosen
for the organization is revealing in itself: it boldly states women's
rights in the title going beyond the title of the "parent"
organization the International Women's Suffrage Alliance (IWSA).
The motto of the IWSA "Equal Rights - Equal Responsibilities"
became the motto of the League and shaped the League's positions
on several controversial issues bringing it, occasionally, in opposition
with the stands adopted by other organizations including the socialists
(Sosialistikos Omilos Gynaikon), the General Confederation of Greek
Workers and some unions of women professional workers over the need
for protective legislation for women's labour.
The magazine was a forum of discussion of the appropriate means
to achieve the prime goal set by the radical feminists for the 1920s,
i.e. voting rights, but also for other issues which had become pressing:
women's professional work rights (entry into the professions and
the trades, the right to professional advancement, equal pay), the
revision of the archaic family law which left wives and mothers
with less than minors' rights, the abolition of the abhorrent system
of state (police) regulation of prostitution and of trafficking,
and, interestingly, a concern for what we would call today confidence
building measures for the better understanding between the peoples
of Europe -especially the strife-torn Balkans, and for conflict
resolution by diplomatic means. As for the latter, the League took
the initiative in the creation of a women's forum to discuss contentious
international issues. During the 9th Congress of the IWSA, held
in Rome in 1923, the representatives from Poland, Romania, Serbia,
Czechoslovakia and Greece (represented by the League, the National
Council of Greek Women and the Lyceum of Greek Women) set up the
Women's Little Entente. The Little Entente held several congresses
one of which (the third) was held in Athens in 1925.
Feminist action undertaken by the League (and propagated by the
magazine) during this period was shaped by the consciousness that
women had to become active themselves and to strive, through collective
action, unity of purpose and boldness of voice, to change their
social status. This was a definite break with the past and merited
the attribution of "radical feminism' for the League. However
there were inherent weaknesses in the movement the key one probably
being that the leaders of the League did not realize early on the
limits of liberal democracy and the political system in so far as
the granting of women's rights were concerned and that feminist
consciousness raising was a Herculean task at that time. Finally,
the unity of purpose advocated by the League was achieved only partly
as the close collaboration with organizations of different strands
of feminism was never easy and at times became impossible. Towards
the beginning of the 1930s, there was evidence of an emerging split
between the League, the socialist women's groups (which derided
the emphasis on voting rights as bourgeois concerns) and the conservative
women's groups retrenching to the less political issues of education
and social welfare.
After the end of the Second World War, the League tried to reorganize
itself. As early as 1945 the League organized a committee comprised
of representatives of key women's organizations, which appealed
to political leaders to place voting rights for women on the political
agenda. The timing was not auspicious. The conservative government
in power was loath to reopen the discussion on women's voting rights.
This time however, pressure originated from without: The United
Nations (whose San Francisco Declaration in 1945 was signed by Greece)
and its Committee for Women's Rights. Greece's representative to
the Committee Lina Tsaldari, signed in 1951, the International Convention
on Women's Political Rights which added pressure on the Greek government
to introduce to Parliament a Bill (2151/1952) giving full political
rights to women. The Bill was passed with 72 MPs voting for it,
64 against and 3 abstaining thus ending a battle begun 32 years
earlier. Women first voted in the 1956 national parliamentary elections.
The Governing Board of the League decided to publish the magazine
again in 1964, several years after the League started operating
again. The editing was entrusted to Alice Yotopoulos - Marangopoulos
who also acted as Vice-President. During this second period of publication
the magazine only published 14 issues, the last one being the one
dated November-February 1967. Two months later, on April 21, came
the Colonel's coup. The League decided to suspend publication of
Women's Struggle given the fact that press censorship had been imposed.
Following the restoration of democratic rule in 1974, the League
once again gathered its forces for the upcoming battle to insert
'a gender dimension" in the redemocratization and modernization
process. There was a great deal of unfinished business left from
the previous eras. Only voting rights had been secured but legal
and institutional reforms in all areas were sorely needed.
In the first issue (January 1979) of the third period of publication
of the magazine, which kept its original "battle cry"
title, the League's president, Alice Yotopoulos-Marangopoulos wrote
in the editorial page: " The Struggle continues… If we compare
our times with those when the magazine first made its appearance,
the change is tremendous. The then "scandalous" demands
(for women's rights) are now part of the programme of the United
Nations or they have already been fulfilled." The League felt
that the magazine would again serve a purpose since now, there was,
at last, a women's movement in Greece with many organizations and
several publications (albeit some of them attached to political
parties).
The League felt that the new (1975) Constitution's provision that
women and men are equal and the deadline, set for 1982 to revamp
all laws not conforming to gender equality, offered a golden opportunity
to bring about change and there was a lot of work to be done. Nothing
could be closer to the truth! Issue after issue of Women's Struggle
selected, analyzed and prescribed solutions to the multitude of
problems which had accumulated over the decades: Family law reform,
civil marriage, divorce, abolition of the dowry, family planning,
decriminalization of abortions, reproductive freedom, recognition
of children born out of wedlock, labour law reform, equal pay for
equal work, abolition of legal obstacles to entry into the professions,
equal training opportunities for women, new technologies at work
and women's unemployment, pension reform, sexual harassment at the
workplace, gender stereotyping in job advertising, parental leave
for both parents, penal code reform, (violence against women, rape,
trafficking, prostitution), women and politics (representation of
women in elected bodies-local, national and European), the adoption
of a quota system in electoral systems, developments internationally
and in Europe (culminating with efforts by women's organizations
to place equality "in particular equality between men and women"
in the article on Union values of the new European Constitution).
For the greater length of this period of publication (i.e. from
Jan 1979 to the January-June issue of 1999) Rena Lampsa was the
magazine's editor creating some of its more symbolically potent
and aesthetically innovative covers. The magazine was published
either on a quarterly or a biannual basis for most of this period,
with a more modern layout, photos, colourful covers, many standard
columns and an extensive summary of its contents in English. The
79 issues of Women's Struggle published since 1979 provide the reader
with an invaluable insight into the modern Greek feminist movement.
Together with the older issues from the 1920s and 1930s and those
from the 1960s, they offer a rare kaleidoscope of the tumultuous
history of Greek feminism in the 20th century.
Athens, April 27, 2006
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*Professor Xanthi Petrinioti was an occasional contributor to Women's
Struggle since 1979 and the magazine's Editor during 2000-2007.
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