In the 1950s the Australian Women’s Weekly published an etiquette guide advising the reader not to raise financial issues when her husband was in a bad mood and to always be pleasant and smiling when he arrived home from work.
The Weekly’s current editor-in-chief, Nicole Byers, says the etiquette guide she uncovered while preparing for the magazine’s 90th anniversary is “quite shocking to read now”. “We had a bit of a chuckle about the etiquette guide that we used to run that had a lot of very strict rules for women,” Byers said.
