Health becomes important focus of major women's magazine
Health has shifted from a minor to a major preoccupation for one of Australia's biggest-selling women's magazines over the past 50 years, according to a University of Queensland study.
Funded by an $11,500 Australian Research Council Small Grant, English Department lecturers Drs Frances Bonner and Susan McKay and research assistant Kathryn Goldie surveyed health stories in the Australian Women's Weekly since 1948.
Using microfilm of four issues selected from each year, the researchers classified health items in three categories - readers' letters, advice columns and features.
Preliminary results showed that while health-related stories appeared once or twice in each issue in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they were a frequent feature by the 1980s and 1990s, Dr McKay said.
Published in the latest edition of the Journal of Australian Studies, the study provides what is believed to be the first comprehensive historical analysis of the changing treatment of health issues in a prominent women's magazine - the Australian Women's Weekly's circulation was just under 750,000 in 1950 rising to 1.25 million in 1983 before dropping to 860,000 in 1998.
"In these earlier editions of the Weekly, you might find a Mothercraft Column on a topic such as child immunisation or an article on looking after your husband's heart with most of the rest of the magazine devoted to service sections such as cooking, gardening or knitting, social pages or romance fiction," Dr Bonner said.
Dr McKay said the study provided a map of the growing preoccupation with health issues and supported previous studies in which magazines had been shown to be an important source of health information for Australian women.
"What is also very evident is the important role magazines have played in raising awareness about health issues such as breast cancer, kidney disease, SIDS and heart disease," she said.
"The October 1995 issue of the Weekly featured a four-page section and giveaway laminated breast self-examination card in conjunction with National Breast Cancer Week."
The study also showed changing emphasis on particular health issues and the ways they were reported, Dr Bonner said.
She said while earlier issues emphasised children's health issues, ranging from the minor such as the importance of hand-washing through to major problems such as polio, personal health matters became more prominent in later magazine issues.
"Articles on teenagers first appeared in 1954, with a Teenage Weekly supplement (including a few health stories) available between 1959 and 1964. We also started to see more articles on caring for ageing parents in the 1980s and 1990s," she said.
Dr McKay said while heart disease and cancer had always been the subject of health articles, some health issues such as Alzheimer's disease were discussed only recently.
A continuing popular issue related to health featured in the Weekly had been multiple births, she said. Drs Bonner and McKay noted the Weekly's reporting of the progress of the Sara quads from their births in 1950 to their 21st and 40th birthdays. More recently the focus had been on multiple births following IVF treatment.
The researchers said the next phase of their study would involve a more detailed examination of stories about health problems told by both celebrities and ordinary people in a broader range of women's magazines.
"People telling their own stories about health problems or what are termed ?pathographies' become far more prevalent from the late 1970s with celebrity pathographies a common feature from the 1980s. Olivia Newton-John, Raylene Boyle and Jocelyn Newman are all high-profile women who have discussed their illnesses," Dr Bonner said.
She said she and Dr McKay would examine how celebrity pathographies differed from those featuring ordinary people.
For more information, contact Dr Bonner (telephone 07 3365 1438) or Dr McKay (telephone 07 3365 2872).
