Background: Evidence has consistently demonstrated that older people, especially older women, are underrepresented across all types of media, and often stereotyped. Older women are a significant audience for print magazines and an increasing proportion of many titles’ readership. There has been no prior systematic content analysis of Australian women’s magazines and how they portray older women. This study investigates the frequency and nature of portrayals of older women in Australian women’s magazines published in 1992 and 2022 and whether this has changed over time.

Method: Five high circulation magazine titles were chosen; all were published continuously between 1992 and 2022. A content analysis framework was developed and tested. Four issues of each magazine from each year were analysed. Photographic images including a person/people and sized 1/8 page or larger were coded using 15 categories including age, gender, race, context, portrayal.

Results: 6000+ rows of coding were recorded in Excel. Analysis has found that the representation of older women increased between 1992 and 2022; the frequency varies greatly between magazines. Older women were usually celebrities or portrayed as the ‘golden ager’ stereotype of happy, healthy, active and affluent. The vast majority were white.

Conclusions/implications: Representation of older women in magazines has increased over time, however they are still underrepresented compared to younger women. Older women are portrayed in narrow categories and those in marginalised group/s are rarely represented. The importance of diversity in media representation is increasingly recognised and actioned, however this has not yet extended to older women.