The Australian Woman and her Migrant Others in the Postwar Australian Women’s Weekly

Sheridan, S 2010, ‘The Australian Woman and her Migrant Others in the Postwar Australian Women’s Weekly’, Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, col. 14, no. 2, pp. 121-132.

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Sheridan is a professor of Women’s Studies at Flinders University. In this article she focuses on the representation of women in The Australian Women’s Weekly from the late 1940s to the early 1970s in light of the influx of European migrants. She begins by suggesting that the female reader addressed and constructed by the magazine is a white, middle class, mother whilst immigrants are presented as ‘others’ and ‘foreigners’. The article discusses the difficulties migrants had assimilating to Australian society as well as the gender inequalities in their representation in magazines. The analysis presented by Sheridan is comprehensive and backed up with strong evidence. The author uses examples from archived Women’s Weekly articles as well as academics to support her statements about how migrants were assimilating and being treated. The writing style is highly readable but does include some gender studies jargon and so is probably intended for academic audiences. This article provides background of the influences that came to define the ‘Australian woman’ and the marginalisation of migrant women from this definition. This information would help researchers to contextualise the 1970s woman and her depiction in popular culture, however it does not provide a specific examination of the 1970s and thus would not be as useful for indexers.