In the 1950s and 1960s, three quarters of the Dutch read a women's magazine like Libelle or Marguerite. With such reach, the magazines could have a major impact on, for example, Catholic women's thinking about birth control. None of that, concludes historian Marloes Hülsken in her dissertation:the magazines lagged far behind the perception of some of their readers. The magazines did not provide information and education for a long time, but they did have an indirect liberating, emancipating effect. Hülsken will receive his PhD at Radboud University Nijmegen on 2 September.
Dragonfly had the scoop:in 1968 she was the first major women's magazine to write an article about the pill, which had already been on the market for six years and had already been taken by 300,000 women in 1966. Old news, in other words, of which the direct influence was small.
Historian Marloes Hülsken investigated whether women's magazines in the period 1950-1975 influenced Catholic women's ideas about motherhood, birth control and sexual morality. They didn't, at least not right away. ‘From the late 1960s, the magazines were helpful, for example when they discussed the pros and cons of different forms of contraception. Before that, it was sometimes about sex education for children, but never about sex or birth control. The information about this came in through other channels:the general practitioner, information evenings, radio and TV.'
Reserving the ads
The large women's magazines were quite conservative for a long time, notes Hülsken. This has to do with the size of the magazines:in 1955-1956, 73 percent of the population, men and women, sometimes read a magazine like Beatrijs, Dragonfly or Marguerite . If you only look at women, the reach is even greater:in the early 1960s, 85 percent of women read a women's magazine.
“The reach was large and the price of the magazines low, which was only possible thanks to advertisements. In order to recruit as many advertisers as possible, the publishers of the magazines did not want to offend readers and thus negatively influence the circulation figures. Potentially controversial topics were avoided.'
From 1965, both Margriet as Dragonfly large surveys, not just among their subscribers. The results made it clear that the editors were lagging far behind 'the zeitgeist', after which that quickly changed. ‘There was attention for emancipation, different views on sex, Dolle Mina and so on. In this way the magazines contributed to the generalization of new behavior among a large audience.'
Modern Catholic sounds
Elsewhere, modern sounds could be heard earlier. Even from the church:Bishop Bekkers already called birth control on TV in March 1963 a 'matter for one's own conscience'. And for example in the magazine Doorkijk, the association magazine of the Catholic Women's Guild. "That was a progressive club. In Look through was already written very progressively about birth control in the early 1960s.'
However, the magazine's influence was limited:at its peak, it had no more than 30,000 subscribers. ‘And the interviews for my research showed that not everyone read it equally well. The magazine was boring and reading it felt like homework.”
Liberating:spending money and time on yourself
Reading magazines like Beatrijs, Dragonfly or Marguerite was certainly not experienced as a chore by the readers who interviewed Hülsken. On the contrary:'When the magazine came in, it was eventually read by all family members, but it was mainly and in the first place for mother, who sat down for a while. The women I spoke to experienced this as new and liberating:spending money on yourself, taking time for yourself.'
Feminist scientists, who condemned the women's magazines for their conservative content, have wrongly overlooked that aspect, says Hülsken.
‘Women's magazines did have a modernizing, emancipating role, but differently than you might think. One woman, for example, remembered how much an ad for face cream had made an impression on her. Sure, the message was that she could look nicer to her husband. But she especially found the idea of spending money on herself instead of on the family revolutionary.'