Readers of women’s magazines have had a rough few years. Every few months another titan falls and today we are mourning the UK print edition of Marie Claire, which at 31 has had its life cut short by the prolific killer, “social media”. Its other victims include Lucky, More!, Look and InStyle UK. Marie Claire will live on in the digital afterlife (and in print in other markets where it continues to be published, such as Australia, France and the US), alongside Glamour, which went digital first in 2017, cutting its print edition to twice a year.

It is an epidemic. Cosmopolitan saw its print circulation drop by a third in the last half of 2018; weeklies Woman and Woman’s Own were down 20% and 19% respectively. Now magazine dropped 43%.

The demise of women’s mags would once have been met with jubilation by some feminists. Although they were a space for women in the media, they were often a toxic one: the circling of celebrity cellulite, the reinforcement of white beauty standards, the endless sex tips focused on every orgasm but your own, only further entrenched misogyny. But, by and large, this is not a representation of women’s magazines today. The closure of Teen Vogue’s print publication was met with widespread outrage, after we had watched the magazine mature into a politically engaged tome for pubescent readers who cared about fashion, but also wanted to ensure that the climate crisis hadn’t scorched the world in which it could exist.

Although glossy magazines are the worst affected, online women’s publications have not escaped – the Debrief and the Pool (where I was once a senior writer) suffered the same fate. The closure of Lena Dunham’s email-based Lenny Letter showed that even a famous CEO and acclaimed writers couldn’t ensure a publication’s longevity.

The sad thing is that the current purge is happening at a time when women’s magazines are less sexist and more progressive than they ever have been. Last year’s September issues made history with virtually every one featuring a black cover star. Some may argue that change came too late, but even magazines that only ever had a feminist agenda haven’t been immune – websites such as Rookie, the Toast and the Hairpin no longer exist. Quick-witted British iterations such as Standard Issue and Motherland have also folded (though Standard Issue has continued to flourish as a podcast).

What is happening to women’s magazines is simply a reflection of an industry-wide problem. But in a media landscape that tends to characterise interests generally associated with men as “news” while women’s issues are often shoehorned into “lifestyle” pullouts and supplements, their absence is keenly felt and their presence still very much needed.