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The Feminine Mystique
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The Feminine Mystique, published 19 February, 1963 is a book written by Betty Friedan, published by W.W. Norton and company which brought to light the lack of fulfillment in many women's lives, which was generally kept hidden. According to The New York Times obituary of Friedan in 2006, it “ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.”
The Feminine Mystique came about after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class.
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The Feminine Mystique, published 19 February, 1963 is a book written by Betty Friedan, published by W.W. Norton and company which brought to light the lack of fulfillment in many women's lives, which was generally kept hidden. According to The New York Times obituary of Friedan in 2006, it “ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world” and “is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.”
The Feminine Mystique came about after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class. Most women in her class indicated a general unease with their lives. Through her findings, Friedan hypothesized that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family.
Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II middle-class suburban communities. She suggests that men returning from war turned to their wives for mothering. At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable.
Criticism
Historian Daniel Horowitz has argued that the origin of The Feminine Mystique was not, as Friedan later claimed, the sudden realization of the “woman problem” by a naïve suburban housewife. Instead, Friedan's feminism was rooted in her extensive involvement with radical politics and labor journalism beginning in the 1940s.
Although Betty Friedan's book helped to open the eyes of many women who did indeed feel "trapped" within a social or domestic situation, other evidence also supports that many of the contemporary magazines and articles of the period did not solely place women in the home, as Friedan argues, but in fact supported the notions of full or part time jobs for women seeking to follow a career path rather than that of a housewife.
In addition, Friedan has been criticized for solely focusing on the plight of the middle-class white woman, and not giving ample attention to the differing situations encountered by women in less stable economical situations, or women of differing race.
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