Problems of Married Working Women as Presented by Three Popular Working Women's Magazines

T HE purpose of this inquiry has been to discover to what extent articles appearing in magazines designed to serve the interests of working women, present a constructive approach to the recognition and solution of the problems of the married woman with regular paid employment outside the home. Articles were drawn from the three leading magazines which appeal primarily to the working woman: Mademoiselle, Glamour, and Charm. Each monthly publication has a circulation of 550,000 or more, and all publish articles of interest to women who work.' The leading articles are, in many cases, designed to help women in selection of careers, training for vocations, and solution of problems contingent upon their occupations. Over a period of a year, 1956-57, all issues of these three magazines were analyzed for articles dealing primarily with the problems of the married woman employed outside the home. Articles dealing with problems common to all working women, such as attitude toward employer, relationship to other workers, or problems of insurance and taxation were eliminated. Articles dealing with problems peculiar to the working widow or divorcee were also discarded. Thirty-five articles were found which dealt primarily with the problems of the married working woman. The particular problem dealt with was recorded, together with the solution proposed by the author of the article. The problems were then classified in three general groups: problems involving conflict among objects of striving, problems involving vagueness of goals, and problems due to failure of the objects of striving. The general attitude of the writer of the artide toward the possibility of achieving a satisfactory solution was also noted. The basis for classification of problems was derived from Alexander Leighton's outline for a frame of reference contained in his artide "Psychiatric Disorder and Social Environment."2 Leighton lists what he considers to be the ten principal patterns of striving with the acknowledgement that the list is somewhat arbitrary, objects of striving change with age of the individual, and some degree of tension and frustration is not only inevitable but desirable. The ten essential patterns of striving for the maintenance of the essential psychical condition of the individual are: for physical security, for sexual satisfaction, for expression of hostility, for the expression of love, for the securing of love, for the securing of recognition, for the expression of a positive force called spontaneity or creativity, for orientation in terms of one's place in society, for the securing of membership in a definite human group, and for a sense of belonging to a moral order. As Leighton suggests, there are general situations in which failure in one or more of the essential patterns of striving may be attributed to difficulties inherent in the objects relating to these patterns. If, for instance, a person acquires mutually incompatible objects, there is conflict which may or may not be satisfactorily resolved. This conflict appears, for example, in the life of the married working woman when she attempts to reconcile demands of her job and demands of home for her time, energy, and thought. Or there may be situations in which the individual finds it difficult to develop strong attachment to objects of striving because they are so vague and shifting that no single object remains in focus long enough to become exdusively compelling or desirable. * Read before the twenty-first annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Asheville, North Carolina, April 12, 1958. 1 Charm and Mademoiselle, both owned by Street and Smith, have the following circulation: