Abstract:
This paper sketches the establishment, consolidation and decline of the Australian
Broadcasting Commission's (ABC) 'Women's Session'. I argue that radio
programming aimed at, and presented by, women during the twentieth century was
significant as cultural form unique to a particular stage in the constitution of a middleclass
female subject. It opens up the question of how a new subject position for
women was constructed in the challenge that public service radio broadcasting made
to divisions between public and private spheres.
Radio research offers a unique opportunity to combine archival research with analysis
of media texts to investigate gender formation through media history. The application
of contemporary gender theory to interaction between audience and institution
questions notions of public broadcasting and the public sphere. Radio studies needs to
interrogate 'the public' as both traditional media theorists and broadcasters
themselves have defined it. Analyses of audience responses to the programs
demonstrate that women actively negotiated the meaning of the programs, and
through their engagement with the medium, sought involvement in civic life during
this period. I advocate the use a feminist cultural studies method in a media studies
context to articulate 'the relationship between different sites' of the production of
gender and make connections between 'everyday practices, institutional inscriptions
and cultural habits' (Craik 1992, 89-98).
