Women and Society: Images in a Popular Women\u27s Magazine in 1960s New Zealand

The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, New Zealand\u27most read women\u27s magazine, greatly increased its circulation in the 1960s. It is thought to have considerably affected women\u27s lives and thoughts since TV was not in wide use yet in those days. The 1960s was also the pre-women\u27s liberation movement period and the situation surrounding women was changing. Lives and thoughts of ordinary women have a long-run impact on changes of women\u27s role and status. By analysing articles and readers\u27letters in this magazine, I aim to reveal messages that ordinary housewives were receiving and sharing. I particularly focus on the relationship between women and society through writings about working women and the compulsory jury system which included women in the early 1960s. Articles introduced and praised working women of ability while they imposed a message on readers that a woman should be a good mother and housewife first of all. In order to make working women look acceptable, many articles emphasised their feminine images, which in turn led to a negative image of feminists. However, young mothers\u27participation in the jury system was regarded as a symbol of women\u27s full citizenship. The Weekly acted as a mirror to society, which reflected women\u27s images in their own consciousness rather than in reality. While it revealed a rather conservative view on women s role in the era which also witnessed a search for ""the changing role of women"", the Weekly acted as a mediator between society and ordinary women