Who was that Woman?

For over half a century the Women's Weekly was a major Australian cultural institution. At the time of its widest circulation, in the 1950s and 60s, it played a central role in creating a national consciousness appropriate for families and a modern consumerist identity for women. In an economy adapting to the new conditions of postwar peace and, for many, prosperity, the Women's Weekly consciously set out to forge a new model of Australian womanhood and family life. Who Was That Woman? sets out to demonstrate the place of the Weekly in the lives of Australian women during this era. It incorporates a social history of the period when the 'nuclear family' and strictly gender-segregated roles reached its height and then began to decline under the pressure of women's return to the paid workforce and associated changes in the culture of everyday life. Who Was That Woman? ends with a penetrating account of the magazine's reaction to the rise of 1970s feminism and the fragmentation of the women's magazine market in the 1980s and 90s.