Cirrus@Austlit

'The Australian Women’s Weekly, the first Australian magazine dedicated solely to the interests of women, turned 90 this year. The magazine is known for its coverage centred around the home and child-rearing, but the early editions of the Weekly also created a space for Australian women to engage with politics through the lens of womanhood.' (Introduction)

'The astonishingly rich prize of the 1956 Australian Women's Weekly cookery competition offers two women the possibility of a new kind of future, in this compassionate look at the extraordinary lives of ordinary women - our mothers and grandmothers - in a beautifully realised post-war Australia.

'It's 1956, and while Melbourne is in a frenzy gearing up for the Olympics, the women of Australia are cooking up a storm for their chance to win the equivalent of a year's salary in the extraordinary Australian Women's Weekly cookery contest.

'For two women, in particular, the prize could be life-changing. Mother of five Kathleen O'Grady has no time for cooking competitions, but the prize could offer her a different kind of life. As her forays into new recipes boost her confidence, she finds her desire to make her own life decisions - for herself and her children - becoming more important.

'For war widow Ivy Quinn, the competition means more time to spend with her twelve-year old-son, Raymond, the development of an unexpected friendship with colleague Dr Harry Johnson, and the courage to tell the truth about Raymond's father.

'As winter turns to spring both women begin to realise that the competition has given them so much more than cooking skills - it offers a new way of seeing the world and the chance to free themselves from the ghosts of the past. As the competition deadline looms the question becomes whether it is winning the competition that will change their futures, or the changes in themselves.'(Publication summary)

'The Australian Women’s Weekly (the Weekly) has long been regarded as a publication that built its success upon espousing a traditional femininity to Australian women through its features on home, family and fashion. The advent of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s prompted swift and radical critiques of the role of women in Australian society, with women’s magazines one key focus for these critiques. To maintain its cultural relevance and mainstream appeal, it was necessary for the Weekly to keep pace with social change, compelling the magazine to question the role it played in perpetuating the inequality of women. This article explores the Weekly’s engagement with the Australian women’s movement of the 1970s, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the Royal Commission on Human Relationships influenced the publication’s reporting between 1977 and 1980. The Commission’s commitment to making the personal political through listening to people’s experiences, especially those of women, was replicated in the Weekly through its 1980 Voice of the Australian Woman project. Analysis of the magazine during this period reveals the ways in which the ideas of the Australian women’s movement had permeated the mainstream by the later 1970s.' (Publication abstract)

'In the 1950s, the Australian Women’s Weekly represented the popular face of femininity, publishing features on the home, motherhood and romance. Among articles about raising children and cooking a family dinner, however, were regular discussions of Cold War politics. How, then, did a strong political awareness of global events fit in with 1950s ideals of femininity, when politics was still very much the domain of men? This article puts forward a framework of “feminised politics” to discuss the ways in which the Weekly adapted, generated and fused contemporary ideas about womanhood with discourse on global events to encourage women’s increasing participation in the politics of the Cold War. As Australian society grappled with the myriad changes brought about by the end of World War II and new power struggles between East and West, the government and media often presented conservatism as the antidote to the fear generated by these widespread changes. Therefore, this article suggests that the magazine’s framing was necessary to alleviate anxieties surrounding women’s changing place in the postwar world. Understanding the Weekly’s feminised politics reinforces recent scholarship on the complexities of womanhood in the 1950s and illustrates the diverse formulation and expression of femininity in the 20th century.' (Publication abstract)

'By taking as its starting point the concept of magazine exceptionalism, this essay argues that popular magazines such as the Australian Women’s Weekly play an important, if not always obvious, role in influencing perceptions of the natural environment. This occurs partly through feature articles on what commonly is called natural disaster, which tell stories of human interactions with nature when it behaves in unwelcome ways. Interrogating these stories over time can inform and challenge writing practice. To illustrate, the essay examines Australian Women’s Weekly feature articles on exceptional floods from 1934 to 2011. It identifies recurring tropes, most notably metaphors of warfare as well as, in some articles, a more ecocentric perspective. Findings are aligned with a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship concerned with the ways in which writers conceptualise non-human others. That scholarship calls for a posthumanist sensibility at a time when anthropogenic climate change will make humans’ relations to the natural environment more fraught.' (Publication abstract)