Another post in my Monday Musings subseries called Trove Treasures, in which I share stories or comments, serious or funny, that I come across during my Trove travels. 

Today’s story popped up as I was looking for articles on women readers in general, and I couldn’t resist sharing it as a treasure. In 1946, just after the war, Prudence of Melbourne’s The Sun News-Pictorial (31 August 1946) ran a competition – not a survey – asking readers “What do you like to find in the women’s pages of your daily newspaper?”

She apparently received hundreds of replies from (presumably mostly women) readers throughout Victoria. The paper says:

Judged as a whole the entries in this novel contest make it outstandingly clear that women are first and foremost homemakers and like to read helpful and constructive matter which is applicable to everyday life.

In addition to this, 90 per cent of women readers like to read interviews with women who have made a success of their chosen careers whether at home or abroad.

I would add to this, from the replies shared in the paper, that women like to see articles from other women.

The main winner, Edna Anderson, dot-pointed her main wishes, saying she liked:

• “Any ideas for improvement in method of work that will increase my efficiency or save my time.
• Something to take my mind off the house — such as interviews with women I’ll probably never meet — travelled women or women who have interesting careers or jobs, I skim.
• Child welfare articles or any thing about children.
• Little human interest stories—I skim through reports of activities or through reports of organisations looking for little personal bits about people concerned.
• Articles that keep me abreast of the trend in fashions.”

What came through clearly in all the winning entries was that although women will, as Mrs R Baines wrote, “read colorful bits of frothy gossip”, these are not what make them want to read the paper. These sorts of articles must not, she says, be the “main course”. Rather, a woman’s

appetite is for something more substantial; nourishing but digestible, solid but nicely garnished, a chop, as it were, but adequately crumbed and served as a cutlet and not drowned in domesticity, though lightly seasoned with such it can be very palatable.

Women, she and others wrote, are interested in what is happening in the world, in popular science that is applicable to life, and in the stories of people who “have contributed something worth while to the world, whether it be intellect, art in its many forms, sport, philanthropy of purse or spirit”. This desire, particularly regarding what is happening in the world, is repeated in articles I read that quoted librarians’ comments about women’s reading in this mid-40s period.

Mrs Baines says:

A tea-party is more memorable for a guest having said: “I read an interesting article in the women’s section the other day . . . “

An entrant using the nom-de-plume, New Lamps for Old, focused particularly on coping with the difficulties of this early post-war period. She was looking for ideas and interactions for “making the absolute best of the difficulties of living conditions today [which] are bound to continue until the post-war world has regained its normality”. And, she says firmly, these ideas “must [my emph] come from interviews with women who are actually facing up to these difficulties”.

She is serious about this. She continues that “interviews with women who are managing on a moderate allowance are of more value than columns describing society weddings”. Indeed, she propounds:

Until the world has righted its problems “glamor” should be deleted from our vocabulary. We are Australians, not Hollywood stars, and have our own way of life.

“A little humor, a dash of seriousness, and a jolt to the men!” (L. Rees)

L. Rees expands on the above points, with her own angle. She wants articles – ‘some with the humorous side to a serious question, others with plenty of “meat” so that we could eat, digest, and argue the ayes and nays’ – on topics ranging “from the children’s literature to any of the bugbears of our time”. She adds that, now the public can read political debates, articles explaining “the jargon used in the House would enable we lesser beings to understand what it is all about”.

Rees would also enjoy a mid-week short story and – this is interesting – she says that

If plays, concerts and films were “covered” by a woman critic, I think we would be better served.

I think I would have liked L. Rees, because, in addition to the above, I also loved her comments on personal and domestic content. Household and cookery articles get “rather monotonous”, she says, but admits they are “a necessity”. Then, although she thinks that “beauty hints are good”, she adds, subversively

instead of so many hints to wives on how to retain that first glamor glow, what about a few hints directed towards the men? How to keep your wife happy! A few hints from the right quarter, and who knows, the husband would be arriving home plus flowers and tickets for a show, instead of the usual routine — eat, read the paper, don slippers, and twiddle the wireless knob, and so to bed. There is no need to fear he won’t read the hints, for it’s astonishing how many men “just glance” at our page. So here are my ideas: “A little humor, a dash of seriousness, and a jolt to the men!”

I will leave that thought with you!

Comments?