PRESENT CHANGES IN SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND STEREOTYPES ABOUT WOMEN IN MAGAZINES FROM DIFFERENT PERIODS

Abstract

This work describes and analyzes the social representations and stereotypes of women as presented in two Spanish magazines separated in time: La Ilustracion Española y Americana ( The Spanish and American Illustration ), which was published between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the magazine Telva , addressed to the female public, which has been published since the 1960s and currently has its own digital version.

Methodologically, a qualitative bibliographic-documentary study was developed, elaborating a corpus of images from both publications, contrasting the social representations and stereotypes present in each publication, contemplating the different contexts, the evolution in the roles and characterization of women, and the current limitations regarding ambitions and rights; conceptions that prevailed, and prevail, concerning women during the Age of Enlightenment and in contemporary times. The discursive characteristics and visual devices of both magazines are presented, in relation to the image of women in the societies of both times.

Among the main findings were knowledge of the secondary role played by women and the association of women with various domestic tasks, which could be found in the publication La Ilustracion Española y Americana, reflected in the different moments of the daily lives of the women; although within the elite which the publication represented, there were avant-garde women who had begun to assume roles of greater prominence and leadership in society. For its part, although in Telva we find images of autonomous and independent women, they are generally related to housekeeping, food preparation and consumption, and the avant-garde in the world of fashion, being able to consider that this magazine also responds to a stereotype of woman belonging to the ruling classes.