The Royal Commission on Human Relationships and the Australian Women’s Weekly, 1977–1980: The Personal, the Political, the Popular

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Australian Women’s Weekly (the Weekly) has long been regarded as a publication that built its success upon espousing a traditional femininity to Australian women through its features on home, family and fashion. The advent of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s prompted swift and radical critiques of the role of women in Australian society, with women’s magazines one key focus for these critiques. To maintain its cultural relevance and mainstream appeal, it was necessary for the Weekly to keep pace with social change, compelling the magazine to question the role it played in perpetuating the inequality of women. This article explores the Weekly’s engagement with the Australian women’s movement of the 1970s, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the Royal Commission on Human Relationships influenced the publication’s reporting between 1977 and 1980. The Commission’s commitment to making the personal political through listening to people’s experiences, especially those of women, was replicated in the Weekly through its 1980 Voice of the Australian Woman project. Analysis of the magazine during this period reveals the ways in which the ideas of the Australian women’s movement had permeated the mainstream by the later 1970s.