The feminine mystique was a term that Friedan coined to describe the societal assumption that women should live their life around the house and should focus on child-rearing. Personally, Friedan thought that the feminine mystique was harmful to women professionally as she believed identity was mainly cultivated through a career. Because of this viewpoint, when she saw women returning to the home after the war was over, she was inspired to write The Feminine Mystique.
In order to prove her point, Friedan gathered statistics through interviews. One of her first interviews was at her former Smith College where she found that many of her classmates were unhappy with their situation as housewives. She then conducted more interviews with suburban housewives. What she found was that the average age of marriage and the number of women attending college was dropping. However, many women explained that they did not always find housework fulfilling and that most could not live up to the idealized feminine behavior. In her book, Friedan rejects the feminine mystique and points out that housework should not be treated as a career and it should be finished as soon as possible. She argued that women could have a successful career as well as family.This book was very impactful in starting a new wave of the feminist movement. During the year of 1964, it became the bestselling nonfiction book with over one million copies sold. While it received some criticism, it was very important as it urged women to think about their roles in society.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Feminine-Mystique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique
In addition to writing such an influential book, Betty Friedman was also the founder of several women's rights organizations. For example, she was the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, and co-founder of the National Women's Political caucus in 1973. Additionally, as you mentioned at the end of your blog, Friedman's work also received a lot of criticism. One such source of criticism, unsurprisingly, came from conservative males, who saw such advances as a threat to their largely male-dominated culture. Another, however, came from women themselves, as a group of them shied away from the radical changes proposed in Friedman's works. Nevertheless, as the decades passed, gender equality would become to forefront to many people's ambitions as more people abandoned this idea of a feminine mystique.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.mcdonoughvoice.com/article/20130316/NEWS/130319309