This article outlines impulses toward internationalism in women's programming during the twentieth century at two public service broadcasters: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Canada and the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in Australia. These case studies show common patterns as well as key differences in the establishment of an international frame for the modern domestic sphere. Research conducted in paper and audio recording archives relating to nonfiction programming for women demonstrates pervasive tensions between women's international versus national solidarities. The article argues that these contradictions must be highlighted—rather than papered over in a simplistic understanding of such programming as reflecting a binary domestic ideology of private versus public, home versus world—to fully understand media history and cultural memory from a gendered perspective.
“A Girdle of Thought Thrown around the World”: International Aspirations in Women's Programming in Australia and Canada
Justine Lloyd is a senior lecturer in sociology at Macquarie University, Australia. She has published in the areas of feminist cultural history and media studies, and has a forthcoming book on intimate geographies of media entitled Gender and Media in the Broadcast Age: Women's Radio Programming at the BBC, CBC, and ABC (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). She coedited a special issue of Media International Australia on the theme of “Gendered Labour and Media” (November 2016) with Jeannine Baker, and she is a joint editor of Space and Culture. In 2019 she was a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta.
Justine Lloyd; “A Girdle of Thought Thrown around the World”: International Aspirations in Women's Programming in Australia and Canada. Feminist Media Histories 1 July 2019; 5 (3): 168–194. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2019.5.3.168
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