Sociological reflections on the history of Russian women’s periodical press

Abstract

This article deals with the history of Russian women’s magazine studies and shows the sociological significance of publications on this topic. Despite the fact that women’s press emerged as an independent type of periodicals at the beginning of the 20th century, the first scientific works devoted to the problems of its functioning appeared at the end of the 20th century. The scientific interest occurred because of the growing popularity of women’s periodicals and their impact on the readership. First, it arose among philologists; however, works by historians and sociologists gradually began to appear in other areas. The key feature that distinguished women’s magazines from a number of other types of periodicals is that they have a clear gender focus. Due to this aspect, many scientific works dealing with women’s press have sociological ideas and conclusions. This article presents a bibliographic review of national female periodicals studies, published from the end of the 20th century to the present, and elaborates on their importance in sociological thought. Each study examined in this article expands existing knowledge about the national female periodicals history, and shows the place and role of magazines in society in a given historical period. All reviewed works bear out the close connection of women’s magazines with the historical context. They also reveal the modified structure of women’s magazine functions and show changed interactions with other institutional structures of society.