Post from Natalia Vogeikoff's blog: From the Archivist's Notebook
“Anna Apostolaki was born in Margarites (near Rethymnon) in 1881. Storm clouds from 19th century Cretan revolutions forced her family to flee first to Piraeus, then to Athens. The difficulties of refugee life and the loss of her father probably contributed to her decision to enroll in the School of the Society for the Promotion of Education and Learning (Αρσάκειο). At the end of the 19th century, she graduated from there as a teacher.
In those years acquiring a teacher’s diploma was almost the only possibility that most women had to earn a living and their only hope of escaping life as a housewife. Apostolaki worked as a tutor for some twenty-five years, but after 1903 she nourished her intellect by enrolling in the Philosophical School of the University of Athens. While a student she worked at the Numismatic Museum as an assistant to Ioannis Svoronos, director of the museum; he was first to instill in her a passion for scientific investigation. It was probably her association with Svoronos that guaranteed that she in 1906 was elected the first woman member of the Archaeological Society at Athens, more than sixty years after the foundation of that institution in 1837.
Apostolaki finished her studies in 1909, one of the first ten female graduates of the University of Athens and the first from Crete. Newspaper headlines commented on her graduation:
“Women are victorious. The Greek world has a new woman doctor as of yesterday…”
“Αι γυναίκες νικούν. Μια νέα δοκτρέσσα έχει από της χθες ο γυναικείος κόσμος της Ελλάδος…”
The need for such a panegyric implicitly acknowledges the difficulties that Apostolaki had faced in navigating an educational system dominated by men. She was a typical emancipated woman of her time, working to earn a livelihood while studying. Emancipation “through education and work” (δια της εκπαιδεύσεως και της εργασίας) would, in fact, be embedded in the charter of the Lyceum Club of Greek Women, founded in 1911 by journalist and writer, as well as the founder of the feminist movement in Greece, Kalliroi Parren (1861-1940).”