Women’s Magazines

Women’s magazines are publications aimed at female audiences that usually focus on entertainment, shopping, home improvement, and self-improvement. Early women’s magazines were established as collections of reading materials presumed to address all of women’s interests—unlike men’s interests, which were represented across a variety of publications. Until the middle of the 20th century, the content of women’s magazines encompassed traditionally feminine spheres, such as homemaking, cooking, child rearing, and romance—in other words, aspects of life representing women’s presumably universal interest in finding a man and serving others. In the second half of the 20th century, however, more specialized women’s magazines began to emerge, targeting women with spending power, while general-interest women’s magazines began to incorporate additional topics of interest, such as career, health, fitness, politics, and ...