On This Day: Betty Friedan draws large numbers of new supporters to feminist cause - Feb. 19, 1963

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The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, The Feminine Mystique became a bestseller, initially selling over a million copies. Friedan used the book to challenge the widely shared belief that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother."

In 1957, Friedan was asked to conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion; the results, in which she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, prompted her to begin research for The Feminine Mystique, conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising. She originally intended to create an article on the topic, not a book, but no magazine would publish the work.

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 truly feminine should not want to work, get an education, or have political opinions. Friedan wanted to prove that women were unsatisfied and could not voice their feelings.

Synopsis

The Feminine Mystique begins with an introduction describing what Friedan called "the problem that has no name"—the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and early 1960s. She discusses the lives of several housewives from around the United States who were unhappy despite living in material comfort and being married with children.

Friedan also questions the women's magazine, women's education system, and advertisers for creating this widespread image of women. The detrimental effects induced by this image were that it cornered women into the domestic sphere, and that it led many women to lose their own identities.

Chapter 1: Friedan points out that the average age of marriage was dropping, the portion of women attending college was decreasing and the birthrate was increasing for women throughout the 1950s, yet the widespread trend of unhappy women persisted, although American culture insisted that fulfillment for women could be found in marriage and housewifery.

Chapter 2: Friedan states that the editorial decisions concerning women's magazines at the time were being made mostly by men, who insisted on stories and articles that showed women as either happy housewives or unhappy careerists. Friedan also states that this is in contrast to the 1930s, at which time women's magazines often featured confident and independent heroines, many of whom were involved in careers.

Chapter 3: Friedan recalls her own decision to conform to society's expectations by giving up her promising career in psychology to raise children, and shows that other young women still struggled with the same kind of decision.

Chapter 4: Friedan discusses early American feminists and how they fought against the assumption that the proper role of a woman was to be solely a wife and mother. She notes that they secured important rights for women, including education, the right to pursue a career, and the right to vote.

Chapter 5: Friedan criticizes the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (whose ideas were very influential in the United States at the time of the book's publication). She notes that Freud saw women as childlike and destined to be housewives.

Chapter 6: Friedan criticizes functionalism, which attempted to make the social sciences more credible by studying the institutions of society as if they were parts of a social body, as in biology.

Chapter 7: Friedan discusses the change in women's education from the 1940s to the early 1960s, in which many women's schools concentrated on non-challenging classes that focused mostly on marriage, family, and other subjects deemed suitable for women.

Chapter 8: Friedan notes that the uncertainties and fears during World War II and the Cold War made Americans long for the comfort of home, so they tried to create an idealized home life with the father as breadwinner and the mother as housewife.

Chapter 9: Friedan shows that advertisers tried to encourage housewives to think of themselves as professionals who needed many specialized products in order to do their jobs, while discouraging housewives from having actual careers.

Chapter 10: Friedan interviews several full-time housewives, finding that although they are not fulfilled by their housework, they are all extremely busy with it.

Chapter 11: Friedan notes that many housewives have sought fulfillment in sex, unable to find it in housework and children.

Chapter 12: Friedan discusses the fact that many children have lost interest in life or emotional growth, attributing the change to the mother's own lack of fulfillment.

Chapter 13: Friedan discusses the psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and notes that women have been trapped at the basic, physiological level, expected to find their identity through their sexual role alone.

Chapter 14: In the final chapter of The Feminine Mystique, Friedan discusses several case studies of women who have begun to go against the feminine mystique. She also advocates a new life plan for her women readers, including not viewing housework as a career, not trying to find total fulfillment through marriage and motherhood alone, and finding meaningful work that uses their full mental capacity.

Legacy

The Feminine Mystique drew large numbers of white, middle-class women to the feminist cause. Her book "took the complicated and jargon-laden ideas of psychologists, economists, and political theorists, and translated them into powerful, readable, relatable prose that touched millions."

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was organized in 1966 with 30 women from different backgrounds; Friedan was one of them, and helped draft the founding statement of NOW. The statement called for "the true equality for all women".

The Feminine Mystique is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century, and is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States.

Friedan received hundreds of letters from unhappy housewives after its publication, and she herself went on to help found, and become the first president of the National Organization for Women, an influential feminist organization.

In addition to its contribution to feminism, The Feminine Mystique related to many other coinciding movements. "Her work indicates for us the ways that feminism was interconnected with the struggles of working-class men and women, with black and Jewish battles against racism and anti-Semitism… As a result, The Feminine Mystique had substantial impact on a wide range of political activists, thinkers, and ordinary individuals."

By the year 2000, The Feminine Mystique had sold over 3 million copies and had been translated into many foreign languages.

Disagreement

Immediately after its publishing, The Feminine Mystique was the recipient of much backlash against feminism. Significant numbers of women responded angrily to the book, which they felt implied that wives and mothers could never be fulfilled.

Historian Joanne Meyerowitz argues that many of the contemporary magazines and articles of the period did not place women solely in the home, as Friedan stated, but in fact supported the notions of full- or part-time jobs for women seeking to follow a career path rather than being a housewife. These articles did, however, still emphasize the importance of maintaining the traditional image of femininity.

Excluded groups of women

In addition, Friedan has been criticized for focusing solely on the plight of middle-class white women, and not giving enough attention to the differing situations encountered by women in less stable economic situations, or women of other races or trans-women.

Friedan has also been criticized for prejudice against homosexuality.

Despite these criticisms, her "language aimed at white American middle-class women won large numbers of supporters to the feminist cause," implying perhaps that Friedan's decision to exclude other groups was deliberate in mobilizing a group of women that had in some cases not thought of the improvement of their rights.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique

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