A turning point for the Weekly and a turning point for women?: the debate about women and University in the Australian Women's Weekly in 1961

In 1961, the Australian Women’s Weekly (AWW) was at the height of its popularity as the most widely read magazine in Australia. While it has been used an ideological text to explore representations of women as active consumers in the postwar period, it has not been used as a cultural and social text to represent the contradictions in women’s lives at that time. By focusing on the debate in the Weekly in February and March 1961 about the usefulness of a university education for young women, this paper demonstrates the magazine’s importance as a major form of social discourse among women and its influence in shaping and reflecting their aspirations. In placing this debate in a wider social context of rising expectations of women generally, the paper also shows how the Weekly represented, albeit unconsciously, contradictions in many women’s lives that were beginning to surface in 1961. Yet because of its engagement with new forms of consumerism, it could only respond in limited ways. The paper concludes that 1961 was a turning point for women and the Weekly in finding new directions in a booming postwar economy.