AFRIKAANS: In die bronne van bewysmateriaal vir Afrikaanse geskiedenis en kultuurgeskiedenis is daar sporadiese verwysings na die bestaan van ‘n vrouetydskrif, getiteld Die Boerevrou. Dit was die eerste, en tot en met die staking daarvan, die enigste Afrikaanse vrouetydskrif. Die tydskrif is in Pretoria van Maart 1919 tot Desember 1931 maandeliks onder die redakteurskap van die eienaar, Mabel Malherbe, uitgegee. Hoewel dit al as ‘n ryk skat van inligting oor die Afrikanervrou en haar leefwyse beskryf is, is daar min inligting oor die tydskrif beskikbaar. Dit is ook in vergelyking met ander tydgenootlike Afrikaanse publikasies soos Die Huisgenoot, baie min vir primêre navorsing gebruik, hoewel oorspronklike versamelings daarvan vandag nog redelik maklik bekombaar is. Gevolglik is Die Boerevrou aan kultuurhistorici betreklik onbekend. Met hierdie studie is daar gepoog om te bepaal of Die Boerevrou as ‘n gesaghebbende primêre bron vir kultuurgeskiedenis beskou kan word en waarom dit nie as sodanig benut word nie. Aangesien daar min sekondêre bronne oor tydskrifstudies bestaan, kan die ontwikkeling van ‘n wetenskaplike werkswyse vir die onderneming van dergelike studies as een van die bydraes van hierdie proefskrif beskou word. Die kultuurhistoriese konteks en ekonomiese omstandighede waarbinne die tydskrif verskyn het, is bestudeer en inligting oor die redaksie, medewerkers, beleid en sirkulasie van Die Boerevrou is ingewin. Dit alles het as agtergrond gedien om afleidings te maak om die navorsingsvraag te beantwoord. Daar is bevind dat die tydskrif van hoë joernalistieke gehalte getuig vir die tydperk waarin dit verskyn het. As vrouetydskrif het dit ‘n wye verskeidenheid onderwerpe van kultuurhistoriese belang gedek. Die studie het ook lig gewerp op die leesgebruike en -voorkeure van die Afrikanervrou in die vroeë twintigste eeu. Dit is duidelik dat kultuur en die media in ‘n baie komplekse verhouding staan en mekaar wedersyds sterk beïnvloed. Die lesers van Die Boerevrou is nie net deur die tydskrif gelei en beïnvloed nie, soos talle ander studies bevind het die geval met die pers in die ontwikkelingsjare van Afrikanernasionalisme was nie. Boerevrou-lesers het ook aktief meegedoen aan die skryf van die teks van die tydskrif omdat hulle ‘n sosiale netwerk gevorm het wat ontvanklik en gereed was vir die assimilasie en verspreiding van ‘n nasionalistiese identiteit. Die Boerevrou is ‘n gesaghebbende primêre bron vir kultuurgeskiedenis en sal in die toekoms met groot vrug in studies oor die Afrikanervrou van 1919 tot 1931 benut kan word. Die feit dat die tydskrif as bron onderbenut word, kan hoofsaaklik toegeskryf word aan twee aspekte: Die meeste studies oor vrouetydskrifte tot op datum is ideologiese analises met ‘n feministiese inslag wat die persepsie by navorsers skep dat vrouetydskrifte problematiese en onbetroubare studiemateriaal is en gevolglik vermy behoort te word; verder is die wetenskaplike bestudering van vrouetydskrifte nog ‘n relatiewe jong studieveld. ENGLISH: Die Boerevrou was the first, and until the termination thereof, the only Afrikaans women's magazine. This monthly periodical was published in Pretoria from March 1919 to December 1931 under the editorship of the owner, Mabel Malherbe. Although it is a rich treasure of information about Afrikaans women and their way of life, there is little known about the magazine. Compared to other contemporary Afrikaans publications, such as Die Huisgenoot, it is also very little used for primary research. This study attempts to determine whether Die Boerevrou can be viewed as an authoritative primary source for cultural history and why it is not utilised as such. Since there are few secondary sources on magazine studies, the development of a scientific methodology for undertaking such studies is considered to be one of the contributions of this thesis. The historical context and economic conditions within which the magazine has been published was determined and information was obtained about the editors, staff, policies and circulation of Die Boerevrou. All have served as a background to make conclusions relevant to the research question. It was found that the magazine is of high journalistic quality for the period in which it was published and reviews a wide variety of topics of interest to women. The study also shed light on the reading practices and preferences of Afrikaans women in the early twentieth century. The relationship that exists between culture and the media is clearly very complex. The readers of Die Boerevrou were not only led and influenced by the magazine, as many other studies have found to be the case with the media during the formative years of Afrikaner nationalism. Boerevrou readers also actively participated in writing the text of the magazine. They formed a social network which was receptive and ready for the assimilation and dissemination of a nationalist identity. Die Boerevrou is an authoritative primary source for cultural history and can be utilised with great success for studies on Afrikaans women from 1919 to 1931. The fact that the magazine is underutilised as a resource is mainly due to two aspects: Most studies of women's magazines are ideological analyses with a feminist slant that create the perception that this genre offers problematic and unreliable study material and should therefore be avoided; The scientific research of women's magazines is furthermore still a relatively young field of study. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Historical and Heritage Studies / unrestricted

In the 300 years since the magazine originated, this mass medium has become synonymous with women and their worlds. Today, publications for, by and about women still dominate the global magazine market, and the selection and circulation of women’s magazines increase annually – indicative of the popularity of this mixed medium of information, instruction and entertainment. Since the 1980s, academics from different human sciences branches, such as Joke Hermes and Marloes Hülsken in the Netherlands and Angela Gough-Yates, Margaret Beetham, Ros Ballaster and Marjorie Ferguson in the United Kingdom, have proven the academic worth of women’s magazines, by using them as information sources about women’s social knowledge, positions and roles, their relationships and consumer behaviour in (amongst others) historical, sociological, psychological, mass media and women’s studies research. In South Africa, however, academic research on women’s magazines is still largely unexploited: apart from a few dissertations, information is mostly limited to single paragraphs in larger mass media studies. Magazines for black women have, for example, not been researched yet. In this study, South African and Dutch magazines from 2006 are studied as sociocultural journals: accounts or collections of the major trains of thought representative of a specific context and time frame. When magazine content is viewed as the textual distillation of the shared consciousness or culture of a particular audience, and discourse as ways of acting and thinking underlying this shared consciousness, magazines, by drawing on different discourses, report on the norms, values and habits particular to a specific era – yielding information that can be applied in reconstructing images of reality. This study aimed to research, within the context of current women’s magazines, the way in which women’s presence in the career world is accepted and legitimised as standard practice, and to explore the influence of the pursuit of a career on other female roles. It was assumed that the range of ‘superwoman’ roles (career woman, mother, wife, homemaker, lover, friend …) resonates in the ‘work discourse’ – and that all women experience similar frustrations, fears, dreams and expectations, irrespective of linguistic, cultural and socio-economic factors. A selection of sixteen magazines – two issues each of four South African and four Dutch magazine titles, aimed at diverse readerships – were singled out as primary research material. Magazine content was subsequently submitted to close reading, in order to examine as closely as possible the approaches towards women’s deployment in the career world, as made evident in the text. Theoretical concepts from mass media studies, cultural studies, discourse analysis and feminist criticism underpinned the identification of textual patterns, leading to the establishment of links between text and reality and meaningful interpretations of eventual findings. The results indicated that the work discourse in all the examined magazines is informed by three interpretative repertoires – that ultimately determine the way in which this discourse is developed and maintained, both in the magazine content and in everyday life. When the findings resulting from the textual analysis of the work discourse represented in these magazines were compared with actual statistics on the career world, it became obvious, however, that magazine content does not necessarily reflect reality – but that internalising the ambitious, larger-than-life dream aspects contained between a magazine’s covers is precisely the aspect from which readers derive pleasure and satisfaction. / Dissertation (MA (Afrikaans))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Afrikaans / unrestricted