How are women represented in local women’s magazines?

Every 8 March, International Women’s Day (IWD) is commemorated to recognise women’s economic, political, and social achievements, as well as celebrate gender equality. In 2016, the Singapore Council of Women’s Organizations marked IWD with the theme ‘Marching to our own beat’ and inducted 14 outstanding women – two Supreme Court Judges, six Sportswomen, two Food Personalities, a Diplomat, an Activist/Advocate, a Medical Aid Worker, and a Community/Social Worker– into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame.

Iccha Basnyat and Leanne Chang from the Dept of Communications and New Media looked into the ways women are represented in Singapore by analysing articles from two women’s magazines – Cleo and Her World. Focusing on tone, character, author, and supplementary photographs, as well as story, genre, feminine attributes, and masculine attributes, it is found that two polarizing images of women dominate the magazines: the traditional feminine woman versus the modern, independent, career-driven woman. The magazines employed more masculine traits when portraying women as individuals, and more feminine traits when portraying women in relation to other people. For example, inability to deal with pressure, submissiveness, indecisiveness, and dependence appeared often in articles about relationships, while beauty, lifestyle, and health articles included characterizations of women as active, persistent, and confident, as well as emotional, gentle, and slim. Readers of Cleo and Her World are presented with the message that women should be more traditionally feminine in relationships with others, but are permitted to incorporate some masculine traits into their self-presentation.