The Evolution of the Role of Women in the Family and the Public Sphere (The Case of Domestic Women’s Periodicals of the Late 19th ‒ Early 20th Century )

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to consider the process of transformation of the image of a woman and the dominant family model in the main historical periods in the national female periodicals from the end of the 18th century to the present days. The authors note that the image of a woman in the gender media is changing due to the changes in the global and local agenda, in particular, due to the changes in the position of a woman in the family, the structure of a family, and decreasing of the number of family members. These transformations can also be explained by the change in the state’s requests for the promotion of a certain image, for example, the image of a patriotic woman during the Second World War and a mother woman in the post-war period. Over the course of many historical periods, rubrics devoted to the arrangement of everyday life, the relationship of the sexes, health and beauty, and motherhood remain the traditional rubrics of women’s publications. During more than two hundred years of publications, the image of a woman in them has gone through stages from primordial patriarchal models through a surge of individualization and independence to a moderate combination of the role of the homemaker and the installation of autonomy from men. The article also outlines the main trends in the development of modern women’s online publications, which, on the one hand, have inherited the theme and structure of traditional women’s magazines, and on the other, have the features of blogs. If certain characteristic images of a woman in the press gain or lose relevance, the changes in the family model in women’s media can be considered irreversible: there is no return to the image of a patriarchal multi-generational family. The study was based on the methods of historical review, thematic analysis and content analysis of publications of women’s magazines of various historical periods.

Keywords

• women’s periodicals
• the history of women’s periodicals
• the image of a woman in the media
• media images
• gender identity
• family model
• women’s online media