She Magazine
In 1963 a magazine of the name ‘She-Journal For The Home’ hit the newsstands of East and West Pakistan. It was founded and edited by LSE graduate Zuhra Karim and continued to be published, albeit with some gaps, till 2020. The decades of changes in She magazine from the 1960's to its final years of production in early 2020, are collated in a year-long project called Editing Women in the Archives, funded by Teesside University in the UK through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), curated by Dr Madeline Clements with regional support from The Karachi Biennale Trust (Niilofur Farrukh) and The Aleph Review (Mehvash Amin).
From February–June 2024, I documented and analysed over 109 issues of She Magazine were documented and archived for Editing Women in the Archives/ This extensive digital documentation of physical archives included interviews with former She employees, tracing down contributors and printing houses who were involved with the making of the magazine. Aside from She magazines, Nukta Art magazine and a variety of books, reports, and manuals published by the Simorgh Women’s Resource and Publications Centre, as well as Women’s Action Forum (WAF) newsletters were also included in this project. The findings and evaluation from these materials culminated in its first phase through a launch at the Karachi Biennale Discursive in November 2024 presenting a ‘Digital Handbook’ which aims to share insights by the four researchers into the process of locating, obtaining, surveying, and documenting the selected materials. *
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Madeline Clements, PAWPE, Editing Women in the Archives- Digital Handbook, 2024Images, research, and documentation would not have been possible without:
Angeline Francis, Nabahat Lotia, Naheed Yahya, Perviz Masani, Pomme Amina Afzal
1970’s SHE issues all provided by The Women’s Library, London School of Economics (LSE)
Additional interviews and research aided by:
Kausar S. Khan, Khawar Mumtaz, Moneeza Hashmi, Nighat Gaya, Niilofur Farrukh, Nyla Daud, Sabahat Zheej, Salima Hashmi, Zohra Yusuf