The School, the Hospital, and the Office: The Modern Woman in Public Life Spaces Through the Women’s Magazines of Zig-Zag Publishing (1940-1960)

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the spaces that the women’s magazines of the Zig-Zag publishing house, specifically Eva and Margarita, established as milestones for the participation of the “modern woman” in Chilean public life in the mid-20th century. We argue that the school, the hospital, and the office illustrate the itinerary outlined by these magazines to delimit and legitimize the experiences of middle-class women in the public sphere, based on their paid labor occupations. Additionally, we explore the mediating role of these publications, which amplified gender mandates and accompanied their readers in the challenge of adhering to an ideal of womanhood that left behind domestic lethargy to inhabit, through their own bodies dressed in urban attire, the spaces of modernity. The methodology includes an analysis of the socio-discursive representations, as well as the rhetoric of the images accompanying the sections dedicated to women’s integration in the world of work and fashion in Eva and Margarita magazines.