Английская Википедия:Avra Theodoropoulou

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Шаблон:Infobox person

Avra Theodoropoulou (Шаблон:Lang-el; 3 November 1880 – 20 January 1963) was a Greek music teacher, pianist, suffragist and women's rights activist. She founded the League for Women's Rights in 1920 and served as its chairperson from 1920 to 1957. She was married to the poet Шаблон:Interlanguage link.

Early life

Avra Drakopoulou was born on 3 November 1880 in Edirne, Ottoman Empire, to Eleni and Aristomenis Drakopoulos, who was a consul official for Greece in Turkey.Шаблон:Sfn Her sister, Шаблон:Interlanguage link, was a well-known poet and actress. In their childhood, the family was posted in Turkey and then Crete before settling in Athens.Шаблон:Sfn Completing high school, Drakopoulou learned English, French and GermanШаблон:Sfn and became involved as a volunteer nurse during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. In 1900, she graduated from the Athens Conservatoire and that same year she met Spyros Theodoropoulos, who would become a politician and writer, using the pen name Agis Theros. They would marry in 1906, after overcoming her father's objections to the match.Шаблон:Sfn

Career

Theodoropoulous received the Andreas and Iphigeneia Syngros Silver Medal for her piano skill in 1910 and was appointed to teach music history and pianoforte at the conservatoire.Шаблон:Sfn During this early period, seeking different methods to express herself, Theodoropoulous wrote at least two plays. One, entitled Chance or will (Шаблон:Lang-el) (1906), which was not performed as it was semi-autobiographical, and Sparks dying out (Шаблон:Lang-el), which was performed in 1912 by Marika Kotopouli.Шаблон:Sfn In 1911, she became involved with establishing the Sunday School for Working Women (Шаблон:Lang-el) (KSE), an organization which demanded for the first time that education for women was a right.

During the Balkan War (1912–13), she returned to volunteering as a nurse and was honored for her participation with the Medal of the Hellenic Red Cross, the Queen Olga Medal, the Medal of the Balkan War and the Medal of the Greco-Bulgarian War.Шаблон:Sfn

In 1918, Theodoropoulous was one of the founders of Sister of the Soldier (Шаблон:Lang-el), an association created to address social issues caused by war and give women an active means to participate civically. The organization aimed to enfranchise women and give them civic and political rights.Шаблон:Sfn

The following year, she left the Athens Conservatoire and began teaching at the Hellenic Conservatory.Шаблон:Sfn In 1920, Theodoropoulous, along with Шаблон:Interlanguage link, Шаблон:Ill, Maria Svolou, and other feminists, established the League for Woman’s Rights (Шаблон:Lang-gr)Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn and sought an association with the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) to further their demands for equality. From the beginning, the organization was one of the most dynamic of the Greek feminist organizations.Шаблон:Sfn In 1920, she presented a resolution to the Greek government on behalf of the association demanding that the legal inequalities barring women from voting be addressed.Шаблон:Sfn The following year, she became president of the League and would remain so until 1958, except during the war when the organization was banned.Шаблон:Sfn

The KSE ceased operations in 1922 Шаблон:Sfn and Theodoropoulous turned her attention toward the Supervision Service and the National Shelter (Шаблон:Lang-el), which were both organizations aimed at helping refugees from the Greco-Turkish War. At the end of the conflict, Greece was flooded with refugees and the League's Supervision Service provided volunteers at fifty settlements to provide aid. The National Shelter was an orphanage, which could house up to 85 girls. In 1923, Theodoropoulous launched the League’s journal Woman’s Struggle (Шаблон:Lang-el) and participated in the IWSA’s 9th conference held in Rome. She became a board member of the IWSA and served until 1935 and from the contacts she made at the conference, established the Little Entente of Women (Шаблон:Lang-el) (LEW) which met in Bucharest later that year. At that conference, Theodoropoulous honored with the King Alexander I of Yugoslavia Medal for her work for peace.Шаблон:Sfn

LEW was made of up feminists from Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia and she helped co-organized their annual conferences. Theodoropoulous served as the president of the Greek LEW from 1925 to 1927,Шаблон:Sfn following the presidency of Alexandrina Cantacuzino.Шаблон:Sfn She was extremely active in this period with international conferences and gained some success at home, when in 1930 educated Greek women were allowed the right to elect local officials.Шаблон:Sfn

Later career

In 1936, Theodoropoulou left the Hellenic Conservatory and began teaching at the National Conservatoire.Шаблон:Sfn That same year, when Ioannis Metaxas assumed his dictatorship over Greece, he suspended activities of the women's organization. Women funneled their activities into the war resistance effort to the occupationШаблон:Sfn and Theodoropolous, as she had in other conflicts, volunteered as a nurse.Шаблон:Sfn

In 1946, she became the president of the newly formed Panhellenic Federation of Women (Шаблон:Lang-el) (POG), which was developed to bring all of the women's organizations together and counterbalance left and right positions. The POG organized a conference held in May 1946 with 671 delegates coming together in Athens, but within months the Civil War erupted and Theodoropoulou resigned because she felt that the women's movement should be non-partisan.Шаблон:Sfn

She was forced to sign a loyalty oath in 1948 because of her previous involvement with communistsШаблон:Sfn and the secret police kept dossiers on she and her husband between 1949 and their deaths, which were not destroyed until 1989.Шаблон:Sfn After the conflict ceased, Theodoropoulou resumed her participation in IWSA conferences, attending the conferences held in Amsterdam (1949), Stockholm (1951), Naples (1952), Colombo (1955), Copenhagen (1956), and Athens (1958).Шаблон:Sfn

In 1952, Greek women finally won the right to be full voting participants.Шаблон:Sfn She retired from teaching in 1957 and from the League for Women's Rights in 1958.Шаблон:Sfn During her later years, she worked as a music critic, publishing in newspapers and magazines,Шаблон:Sfn and after her husband's death in 1961, she organized their archives. Theodoropoulou died in Athens on 20 January 1963.Шаблон:Sfn

See also

References

Citations

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Sources

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Further reading

  • Bonnie G. Smith: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History: 4 Volume Set
  • Uglow, Jennifer S. & Hendry, Maggy, The Macmillan dictionary of women's biography, 3. ed., Papermac, London, 1999

Шаблон:Authority control