Poor cousin who came to stay: The well-established Mirror and the depression-era launch of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly

Abstract

This article places the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly magazine within the processes of change that were occurring in the years following the First World War when perceptions of the roles of women were changing and domestic consumerism was evolving. It contrasts the first issue of the magazine, launched on 8 December 1932, with that month’s edition of New Zealand’s largest selling home journal, the Mirror, to illustrate how its founders had identified a gap in the depression-era market in spite of their meagre resources.