Advertising in 'The Lady'
The Hypatia Collection includes a catalogue of women’s magazines, one of which is The Lady. The magazine’s official website states that, since its founding in 1885, The Lady has been in continuous publication and is ‘widely respected as England’s longest running weekly magazine for women’. The website also states that the magazine is ‘celebrated’ for its editorial pages and advertisements. These advertisements, present in The Lady throughout its history, are an interesting, key element of the magazine and contribute to its popularity.
The Lady has been in publication for over 130 years and the Hypatia Collection includes copies of the magazine from 1971 up to 1990. These editions coincide with the women’s liberation movement and offer an insight into the magazine’s representation of women in a time of change.
The collections’ copies of The Lady confirm the historic prominence of advertisements in the publication. Some of the advertisements within the 1970’s-90’s magazines reflect The Lady’s traditional focus on available accommodation. The classified columns of the magazine advertise hotels, apartments, houses and flats in various regions across the United Kingdom and abroad. The magazine was widely acknowledged as a platform for advertising job opportunities in the domestic and catering sectors. As the target audience was female, the advertisements published in the 1970-90’s magazines can give an insight into the work roles of women during the period and the types of opportunities available to them.
The editions of The Lady in the Hypatia Collection reveal a breadth of available domestic and catering positions including ‘cooks’, ‘housekeepers’ and ‘household helps’. Childcare is a prominent theme within the advertisements with numerous positions available as a ‘nanny’, ‘mother’s help’ or even as a ‘surrogate mother’. Other opportunities are advertised in the form of ‘companions’ for widowed men and women. These domestic and catering types of job opportunities are seen in both the 1970 and 1990 editions. The 1970 edition clearly reflects a particular expectation of male/female work roles. The British Library’s ‘Sisterhood and After’ research team states that ‘pre-1970’s society dictated that a women’s place was in the home’. In a 1970 edition of The Lady this social view seems still strong- a ‘widower’ wants a ‘hostess’; a ‘domestic help’ is wanted whose ‘husband’ can follow his occupation ‘but handyman help’ from him ‘would be appreciated’, a retired couple are required for the ‘woman to do housework, man to help in garden and kennels’.
Although there are a few examples in The Lady of 1970 of jobs clearly open to any gender more can be found in the 1990 editions – some job vacancies are addressed to a ‘person’ or ‘individual’ and one registers a ‘wanted couple’ and stipulates a desire for ‘one to be undergardener, the other to work in the house’. Considering that the editions of The Lady in the Hypatia Collection were published in a time where more women began challenging women’s confinement to the home and domestic work, we may have expected the advertisements in the 1990 editions to be more dramatically different to the ones in the 1970’S editions.
The Lady magazine’s advertisement pages provide an interesting perspective on attitudes towards women and their work opportunities during the 1970’s and 80’s. The focus on domestic work for women reflects historic perceptions of gender roles. The Lady is an example of a magazine which promoted, on the whole, more traditional values in comparison to other, more modern and feminist, magazines which emerged in the late 20th century.
Looking for more sources?
As well as copies of The Lady, the Hypatia Collection includes other women’s magazine such as feminist publication ‘Spare Rib’. This more modern magazine provides an alternative perspective on women to The Lady.
In relation to the theme of women’s work roles, the Hypatia collection includes publications which focus on women’s domestic duties and skills, such as cooking and general household tips. Some examples which were written in a similar period to 1970-1990 editions of The Lady magazine include Tamasin Day-Lewis’ ‘The Englishwoman’s kitchen’ , Pamela Fry’s ‘The good housewife’s encyclopedia’ and Trevor Lummis and Jan Marsh’s ‘The woman’s domain: women and the English country house’.
The collection also includes texts which focus on women and the domestic household that were produced towards the earlier period of The Lady’s history. This includes Mary Jewry’s ‘Warne’s model cookery and housekeeping book: containing complete instructions in household management’ which is said to have been published not before 1892.
The British Library has a number of articles about women’s history, specifically the women’s liberation movement, published in the ‘Sisterhood and After’ section of their website. Some of the topics covered include ‘women’s liberation movement’ , ‘feminist literature’, ‘the domestic division of labour’, ‘equality, work and the women’s liberation movement’ and ‘families and parenting’.
References
The Lady’s official website: https://lady.co.uk (accessed 30January 2018)
The British Library, ‘Sisterhood and After’: https://www.bl.uk/sisterhood (accessed 30January 2018)
Written by Lowri Williams