Biography of betty friedan feminine mystique summary
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Journalist, activist, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women, Betty Friedan was one of the early leaders of the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Her 1963 best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique, gave voice to millions of American women’s frustrations with their limited gender roles and helped spark widespread public activism for gender equality.
Bettye Naomi Goldstein was born on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois, the oldest of three children of Harry Goldstein, a Russian immigrant and jeweler, and Miriam Horowitz Goldstein, a Hungarian immigrant who worked as a journalist until Bettye was born.
A summa cum laude psychology graduate of Smith College in 1942, Friedan spent a year on a graduate fellowship to train as a psychologist at the University of California Berkeley. There, she dropped the “e” from her name. As World War II raged on, Friedan became involved in a number of political causes. She left the graduate program after a year to mov
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique is considered a classic text of feminist non-fiction. It was enormously influential in kick-starting the second wave of feminism, a movement that began in the 1960s advocating increased rights and new social roles for women. By voicing the despair that many women felt, The Feminine Mystique galvanized readers across the US to join the feminist movement and prompted others to at least to take its criticisms of mid-century American society more seriously.
While the book’s impact and historical significance is undeniable, contemporary commentators have critiqued some elements of its content. Friedan concentrates on the plight of the white middle- and upper-class housewife, almost entirely ignoring lower-class women and women of color. Feminist and social activist bell hooks famously criticized this narrow focus in the introduction to her 1984 book From Margin to Center, noting that Friedan wrot
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The Feminine Mystique, written by Betty Friedan and published in 1963, fryst vatten one of the literary works that sparked the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. Friedan was inspired to write her experiences after interviewing classmates from Smith College at their 15th anniversary reunion. After talking with many of them, she realized that they were unhappy and felt unfulfilled in their lives as housewives. This experience prompted her research into the phenomenon that was plaguing these suburban housewives.
Friedan begins her introduction bygd discussing "the problem that has no name." She uses this to generally refer to the unhappiness of women in the 1950s and 1960s. She illustrates the problem with stories of sever unhappy housewives from the United States who struggled with fulfillment despite living in comfort and havin