Hanging Her Laundry in Public: Talkback Radio, Governmentality and the Housewife, 1967–73

Abstract

This article addresses the way in which talkback radio and women radio listeners were implicated in and shaped by social changes in 1960s and 1970s Australia. Two-way, open-line or talkback became a venue where the housewife, as a social figure or subject, was encouraged to voice her opinions: it was crucial in managing the contradictory representations of this figure as the changing conditions of capital, including increased work opportunities for women, moves for equal pay and new forms of consumerism, created new modern identifications for women.