The Editorial of Vol. 1, no. 3 (1 May 1904) declared the objective of the Ladies Own Paper: 'to be essentially a Ladies' Paper. Its purpose, therefore, is to deal with matters of special interest in the homes of Australia. Society's doings in the world at large, and Australia chiefly, educational movements, and fashions of the day in dress, millinery, plain and fancy work, house appointments, etc etc, the employments and recreations of girls and women, will be exploited in these pages, and valuable information given that cannot be found in other publications where men's interests predominate.' The magazine favoured Vice-Regal news and portraits, but advocated an Australian, pro-fruit diet over an English one. It recommended the wearing of sandshoes, but did not entirely condemn high heels. It reported on the activities of a range of women's organisations: the Women's Progressive Association of NSW, the National Council of Women, the International Council of Women, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Girls Friendly Society, the Women's Liberal League of NSW, and the Women's Political Educational League. A lecture by Miss Spence was accompanied by her photo; similarly, the article on 'A Woman's Enterprise - Sanitary Supply Co.' was accompanied by a photo of Vida Goldstein. The magazine's politics were explicitly anti-socialist, and it sustained an interest in events in Russia. It advocated the modernisation and mechanisation of the household, and published infomercials about its advertisers' products. Its target audience seems to have been young: running children's essay competitions; encouraging young women to take up 'lucrative avenues of employment' by instituting the Ladies Own Paper Guild (Vol. 1, no. 4), and publishing full-page portraits 'for their own rooms at home, or their schoolrooms, [so that] they may by pleasant means become acquainted with notable people, of the world generally, and Australia particularly' (Vol. 1, no. 4).
