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Feb 04, 1921
Peoria Illinois

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Feb 04, 2006
Washington, D.C

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Her parents were immigrant Jews. Her father was a jeweler and her mother, who had been an editor of the women's pages of a newspaper, left her job to become a homemaker.
At first, Betty continued to work while raising their first child. However, when her second child was born in 1953, her employer refused to let her take a second maternity leave. Betty was forced to leave her job.

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Friedan and her supporters focused on job equality and equal pay , but soon the movement progressed and split into two factions' women’s rights and women’s liberation. The liberation movement composed mostly of young, radical women, advocated for much more than equal job opportunities and education which the women’s rights movement demanded.

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Historical Context of The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan marks the 1940s as the decade in which “the feminine mystique” entered the American consciousness. While men were fighting during World War II, women took over many of the jobs that would have normally gone to men.

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The Feminine Mystique has also drawn criticism for its negative tone toward gay men and women. Formally, the book’s reliance on thinkers such as Freud, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kinsey has eroded some of its timelessness, as these theorists themselves have been criticized for flawed research methodology in the decades since Friedan penned her book.

The phrase "feminine mystique" was coined by Friedan to describe the assumptions that women would be fulfilled from their housework, marriage, sexual lives, and children. The prevailing belief was that women who were who were truly feminine should not want to work get an education ,or have political opinions.

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a landmark book by feminist Betty Friedan published in 1963 that described the pervasive dissatisfaction among women in mainstream American society in the post-World War II period. She coined the term feminine mystique to describe the societal assumption that women could find fulfillment through housework, marriage, sexual passivity, and child rearing alone. Further, prevailing attitudes held that truly feminine women had no desire for higher education, careers, or a political voice rather, they found complete fulfillment in the domestic sphere. Friedan, however, noted that many housewives were unsatisfied with their lives but had difficulty articulating their feelings. Friedan deemed that unhappiness and inability to live up to the feminine mystique the problem that has no name.

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Situating her study of women in the post-World War II era, Friedan argued that when men returned home after the war, women—who had stepped in to fill the jobs men had left in order to fight in the war—were expected to return to the home and to perform more-suitable “feminine” activities. That expectation inspired the feminine mystique. Men returning from war looked to their wives for nurturing. Furthermore, largely because of the escalating Cold War during the 1950s, the cultivation of the American nuclear family and the idealized domestic space was part of an ideological battle against Soviet Russia. Middle-class white women in particular were considered warriors in that battle, because, in representing idealized femininity, they showed the superiority of the American capitalist consumer society.

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The Feminine Mystique was one of many catalysts for the second-wave feminist movement (1960s–80s). By the end of the 1980s, however, its flaws had been clearly identified. Its arguments, broadly speaking, were less relevant, because twice as many women were in the workforce as had been during the 1950s. Furthermore, feminists of color, notably bell hooks, found Friedan’s manifesto both racist and classist, not at all applicable to African Americans and other working-class women who joined the labor force from necessity.

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Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name" often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college educated, middle and upper class, married white women housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.

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Women played a crucial role in galvanizing the Civil Rights Movement. While resulting legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act was a win for African Americans of both genders, they were particularly symbolic for women.

Women’s Rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, color, or national origin in public places, schools, and employment. Women's Rights. Despite great strides made by the international women’s rights movement over many years, women and girls around the world are still married as children or trafficked into forced labor and sex slavery.

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Women's Rights | Betty Friedan interview | 1977

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One of America's great feminists Betty Friedan | CBC