Gender Roles in Magazines

Women's Magazines

In the late 1800s, women's magazines put women on a pedestal and were quite direct in telling women what their roles were or should be. Edward Bok, editor of Ladies'Home Journal, wrote in 1893: “The number of women in business who lose their gentleness and womanliness is far greater than those who retain what, after all, are women's best and chief qualities.”

Without being quite so blunt, women's home and service magazines (Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's, among others) have always emphasized traditional messages, such as family issues, child care, cooking, and housekeeping. Fashion and beauty magazines (Cosmopolitan and Glamour, among others) focus not only on fashion and beauty but also on male-female relationships. In the 1970s, a new breed of magazine came along. With titles such as Working Woman and New Woman, they offered hope for content slightly less traditional than the older magazines. However, a 1995 issue of New Woman contained 12 pages of makeup advertisements before the table of contents and regularly run columns on fashion and beauty. The emphasis on fashion and beauty does more than suggest to readers—of any age—that looking good is of utmost importance. Who a woman is matters less than what she looks like.

Magazine research focuses primarily on women in advertisements, articles, and short stories in relation to men and occupations. Butler and Paisley (1980) summarized the research up to 1980. They found that, in articles, working mothers were portrayed unfavorably, traditional marriage was emphasized, and if women worked, they did so in low-status jobs. In short stories, few married women worked, and those who did work were primarily looking for husbands. In advertising, men had more roles, were more often employed, and more often had higher-status positions than did women.

Research after 1980 uncovered some changes, in part because of the birth of such nontraditional magazines such as Working Woman and feminist magazines such as Ms. The traditional magazines, too, have changed the world of women's magazines, if at a snail's pace. In the 1980s, more women were shown working outside the home and in a more positive light, as Ruggiero and Weston noted in a 1985 article. Analysis by Loughlin in 1983 found that, in fiction, the numbers of women with careers increased, and career women were not unsympathetic characters. On the other hand, the dependent heroine—defined as one who depends on others for identity or survival—has long been a part of women's magazine fiction and was found as late as 1997. In Peirce's study, fewer than half of the main characters solved their own problems and thus were dependent on others to solve problems for them.

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