Women's Health in Melbourne's Print Media: A Content Analysis

Abstract

This paper examines the portrayal of women's health issues in two newspapers: The Age and The Herald Sun. It aims to discover the frequency in Melbourne's print media of coverage of women's health issues, the placement of these articles, the variety of women's health topics covered, and the underlying messages in articles on women's health. It also aims to investigate the level of public reaction to the area of women's health by monitoring the Letters to the Editor and Your Say columns. The study employed an unobtrusive method and was conducted over a three month period: May to July 1998. It found that 38.46% of health articles published between May and July were specifically related to women's health, and that 22.17% of public reaction responses to health over the same period were related to women's health. There was little variety in the coverage of women's health, as many of the articles and public reaction responses centred on women and their ability to conceive and raise children. This implies that women are still portrayed by the media as 'mothers' in Australian society.