‘SHOCKING’ ISSUES

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33252, 15 June 1973, Page 5

‘SHOCKING’ ISSUES

(N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) LONDON, June 14. With the right formula, running a woman’s magazine can bring in a lot of money —as the International Publishing Corporation well knows. With 28 women’s magazines, it has easily the monopoly of the market, some of its publications being big sellers such as “Woman’s Realm,” “Woman’s Journal,” “Honey,” and “Petticoat,” and the two top-selling women’s weekly magazines in the world, “Woman,” with a circulation of nearly two million, and “Woman’s Own,” with more than one million and a half. Yet, despite the apparent variety of these and other women’s magazines, almost all are centred around women’s consumer interests — be they clothes, make-up, kitchen gadgets, the latest in washable wallpapers, or a holiday away-from-it-all. “COMMERCIAL” PRESS It is who they are aimed at, rather than what they are saying, that makes for differences between them. “Woman’s Journal,” for instance, caters for the wealthy woman who can go straight out and buy the $2OO dress featured on their shiny pages. “Woman’s Realm,” on the other hand, gears itself to the busy mother who nevertheless still finds time to run up her own curtains and the family clothes. That there is a demand for something different, yet still for women, is borne out by the success of the “alternative" magazine started a year ago, “Spare Rib.” Started by an Australian, Marsha Rowe, aged 29, and Rosie Boycott, aged 23, the magazine deals with “women’s real needs,” rather than the superficial wants imposed upon them by the commercially-inspired press. Its success is not so much measured in circulation figures—its sales average between 12,000 and 15,000 a month—as the fact that it has survived at all, and that many of its readers are actively involved.

This involvement is one of the magazine’s aims—to help counteract the isolation many at-home mothers feel, says Marsha Rowe. A controversial letters column is a feature of the magazine, and readers are encouraged to drop in and meet the magazine’s staff at any time they are in London. “Women need help,” she says, “and they need to help each other.” She feels that women’s lib is often unsympathetic. “You know, you are 35 and have three children and they make you feel that you’ve wasted your life.” “At the other end of the scale,” says Rosie Boycott, “are all those women who have been led to believe that to be a wife and mother is the be-all and end-all. If they don’t feel satisfied with that they’re supposed to be a freak. But if they talked to their next door neighbour they’d probably find she felt the same.” Both women worked for the underground press before starting “Spare Rib,” but found it “too male-domi-nated.” Now they work with an all-female staff—eight of them altogether—sharing the work evenly and getting only $3O a week each. G. GREER BACKING The magazine is a combination of publishing interests. Its financial backers include Germaine Greer, Kathy Tynan — and a merchant bank. And while the former printers of the recently-closed underground magazine, “Oz,” knock 20 per cent off the publishing bill, the magazine is sold through the pillar of the publishing establishment, W. H. Smith. The staff has’ celebrated the magazine’s first birthday with a special, changed issue. It is the result — says Rose Vemey (there are four Roses on the magazine) — of “endless conferences and soul searching about who we really are trying to reach.” When the magazine started Rosie Boycott said they were aiming at “the ordinary woman,” and that they wanted to “bridge the gap between women’s lib. and women’s institute.” But the editorial in their birthday issue seems to be directed more at the libbers.

“The press has begun to take up some of the issues previously dismissed as hysterical demands of women’s liberation, and has provided coverage of events like the passage of the anti-discrimination bill,” it reads. UNSUNG ISSUUES “However, as long as the newspapers restrict articles for women to a single women’s page — a page usually devoted to fashion and food — it is even more important for our news to present the woman’s point of view, analysing the significance of events in relation to women’s lives and reporting on our unseen, undiscussed ! problems. “We are being promised equal opportunity, and equal pay in 1975 but we mustn’t be lulled into complacency — real liberation of women’s minds and bodies has hardly begun. We are not going to let women’s liberation be wrapped up in an antidiscrimination bill and forgotten like the vote.” The magazine’s new format gives a larger news coverage — this month it deals with family planning, pollution, and reforms in Sweden’s health programme — and regular columns on, for a start, 1 science, education, health, and law. Also in this issue are an article on “beaten-up women and their children” by a columnist for the “Guardian” newspaper, Jill Tweedie, a waitress explaining exactly why she puts up with her job, a piece by a man on how women can use unions to help bring about equal pay, and extracts from the recently published book by Phyllis Chesler, “Women and Mad“Spare Rib” — the price has just gone up to 40c — carries some advertisements, mainly for records, books, pregnancy testing and sex aids. “Ideally,” says Rosie Boycott, “we wanted to be able to afford not to carry advertising, but we have got to be realistic about it. We need the money.”