Woman’s Work. Victoria Purman. 2023.

The astonishingly rich price of the 1956 Australian’s Women’s Weekly cookery competition offers two women the possibility of a new kind of future, in this compassionate look at the extraordinary lives of ordinary women - mothers and grandmothers in a beautifully realised post-war Australia.

It’s 1956, and while Melbourne is in a frenzy gearing up for the Olympics, the women of Australia are cooking up a storm for their chance to win the equivalent of a year’s salary in the extraordinary Australian Women’s Weekly cookery contest.

For two women, in particular, the prize could be life-changing. For war widow and single mum Ivy Quinn, a win would mean more Tim’s to spend with her twelve-year-old son, Raymond. Mother of five Kathleen O’Grady has no time for cooking competitions, but the prize could offer her a different kind of life for herself and her children, and the chance to control her own future. 

As winter turns to spring both women begin to question their lives. For Kathleen, the grinding domesticity of her work as a wife and mother no longer seems enough, while Ivy begins to realise she has the courage to make a difference for other women and tell the truth about the ghosts from her past.

But is it the competition prize that offers the women a chance to free themselves from society’s expectations, or is it their growing self-confidence and belief in a new kind of future.