Column inches: Women taking space in homemaking magazines in interwar Britain

Abstract

Abstract

During the interwar period in Britain women's magazines provided a place to rethink design practice and how it could further social equality.Although long overlooked as source material in the history of the built environment, women's magazines can reveal intimate insights into the social and political responsibilities held by women in architecture and design.Recent scholarship has argued that magazines offer a more complex view of women's experiences of modernity that previously presumed, and by leaning into such middlebrow, mass cultural objects, this paper argues that we can uncover valuable insights into women's views and expectations of culture, politics, family, home, work, money, and citizenship.In the femaledominated sites of magazine production, space was made on the page for the presentation and discussion of modern design.Working within the confines of a patriarchal society, women writers and editors challenged the canon and published articles on designs for social equality, such as how the single working woman could live independently.Whilst women's writing on architecture rarely appeared in architectural journals of the interwar period, their views were transmitted to wide audiences in magazines targeted at female readerships.