Rape, law and stories of trauma: representations of sexual violence in The Australian Women’s Weekly, 1970–82

Abstract

The 1970s ushered in a period of significant feminist activism, public debate and judicial reform on issues of rape and child sexual abuse. In this article, I examine how The Australian Women’s Weekly raised and navigated the issue of rape from its commercial position as a conservative-leaning publication between 1970 and 1982. It seeks to understand mainstream Australian women’s attitudes towards sexual assault and how they evolved under emerging feminist critique.