Decade of daring differences: How second wave feminism influenced Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal and Redbook from 1963-1973

Abstract

Popular media provides a window in which researchers are often able to observe shifts in societal norms in history, and women’s magazines have provided a wealth of information. This qualitative historical analysis will examine if and how the portrayal of women in three popular women’s magazines—Cosmopolitan, Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook—changed and how society influenced these changes, if at all. The thematic analysis will cover the years 1963 to 1973 because this was time in which multiple changes related to race and sex were occurring within American society, which included the second wave of feminism.