Preview

The Feminine Mystique

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
357 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Feminine Mystique
The treatment of women in the workplace, school and wider society has evolved since the first wave of feminism. But to what extent are women treated as equal to their male counterpart? The persistent gap between the treatment of men and women even after the first wave of feminism provoked a second wave. The catalyst to mainstream feminism in the 1960’s through 1970’s was Betty Friedan’s book,The Feminine Mystique. Women's right activist and writer, Betty Friedan, a leading figure in the Feminist movement. Her book ,The Feminine Mystique, was a major influence in the second wave of Feminism because it voiced what so many women lacked to say; they wanted more. The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963 and over two million copies were sold
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Stephanie Coontz's A Strange Stirring
    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Stephanie Coontz's A Strange Stirring

    Although The Feminine Mystique is often hailed as the harbinger text of third-wave feminism, Stephanie Coontz is quick in the opening lines of her A Strange Stirring to revoke the piece of its grandiose status, instead affectionately remembering it as a “brilliant artifact— and not a timeless classic.” Published in 2011, Coontz’s A Strange Stirring was written in the challenge of the previously held notion that the feminist movement of the 50s and 60s had come about due to a national “dissatisfaction in domestic life” resulting from the “personal inadequacy” woman had felt during the previous decades. Her challenge to ideas that founded the basis of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique feed her writing as she takes an equally controversial stance to Friedan’s book, raising the question of the validity of Feminine Mystique and its impact on the feminist movement when the piece itself neglected to narrate the struggle of women outside the wealthy and white bubble that could afford to read Friedan's book.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Social Revolutions In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter
    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Social Revolutions In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter

    Most men didn’t want women to be anything more than housewives, as they had been for years.While most women wanted the freedom to control their careers, bodies, and families.A majority of women felt that the peaceful days of the fifties transferred to the revolutionary days of the sixties the second “The Feminine Mystique” was published.When Friedan published her book, most of her ideas about the capability of a woman being more than a housewife were despised, while now, most people in her home country agree with her views.Friedan’s book had such a hand in changing people’s views on the roles of women, that it is still useful when issues of domestication are called into question. Finally, when a book that is powerful enough, written well enough, and passionate enough calls for social evolution, the public will…

    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analyzing Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique'
    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Analyzing Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique'

    For years the philosophical debate has raged on. Emotions or intellect? Romanticism, a philosophy with an emphasis on emotion, instinct, and idealism, holds the idea that the world and everything in it is more than the sum of its parts, and holds that there are some things that are not fully discoverable or observable. On the other side we are faced with the philosophy of the enlightenment. Enlightened thinking holds that anything that exist can be discovered through logic, reason, and observable evidence.…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Feminism In Penny Weiss
    • 116 Words
    • 1 Page

    Feminism In Penny Weiss

    Feminism has been born through decades of ignorance and misguidance, a perception of a weaker sex, and a belief that equality is not truly meant for all. Because of this deprivation of equality and privileges that exist exclusively for men, decades of work have been put forth from the feminist movement to ensure that no woman will any longer be held back or have opportunities revoked simply for having the status of a “weaker” gender. Before taking this class, I was hesitant to ever label myself in such a manner and questioned those who had, but after reading Penny Weiss’ revealing piece “I am not a feminist, but …” I no longer have that same reluctance.…

    • 116 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of The Feminine Mystique
    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary Of The Feminine Mystique

    Through the whole book, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, gives numerous insights on how women were treated throughout the years and how their role in life, was to be a housewife and only a housewife. Although women enjoyed caring for their husbands and children, they often became sad, empty, and sometimes suicidal. Women wanted to work outside of their homes and pursue the dreams they always wanted, but it was frowned upon. This led to the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, creating the concept called “Penis Envy”. With this concept, it meant, “the literal explanation of all that was wrong with American women” (105). I do not believe women from the past were envious of men because of their penis but rather their freedom. Due…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Betty Friedan Hero
    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Betty Friedan Hero

    Imagine a world where women have a very little amount of rights, where women being hired was rare, and where only women cleaned. The only reason our world isn’t like that anymore is because of Betty Friedan, and others like her. Betty Friedan experienced having little rights her whole life, and one day wondered if other women felt the same way she did.…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Response To Feminine Mystique
    • 190 Words
    • 1 Page

    Response To Feminine Mystique

    After the release of Friedan’s novel, there was an overwhelming response from the readers. Many responded with utter happiness, claiming that Feminine Mystique had changed their lives, while many responded negatively. Friedan’s success led her to co-fund the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, to work towards increasing women’s rights. By being a part of this organization she influenced the change “outdated laws that were disadvantageous to women, such as sex-segregated help-wanted ads and hiring practices, unequal pay, and firing a woman who was pregnant instead of providing her with maternity leave” (NWHM). However, many African Americans felt that NOW was “too white and middle class” to address the problems poor women and racial…

    • 190 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    The Miss America Scholarship Fund Case Study
    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Miss America Scholarship Fund Case Study

    According to the dictionary, feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. This means that what a feminist wants is not a matriarchal society where men are oppressed by domineering women, but equality for women. This doctrine has existed for many years, and it first became prominent during the late eighteenth century. However, if we are to explore how feminism affects society today, we must focus on its more recent history. Specifically, the “second wave” of feminism which arose during the 1950s and 1960s. This new feminist movement arose a few years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. This book struck a nerve with the American housewife, and caused many to question if all a woman was capable of doing was merely cooking, cleaning, and pleasing her husband. In 1966 Friedan and others formed an activist group named the National Organization for Women, or NOW. This group demanded equal pay for equal work and enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in employment due to race and/or gender. As the feminist movement progressed, more and more women began to stand up for their rights, until in 1980, when women comprised the majority of undergraduates. But enough with history, how does feminism exist in our society today? First we must take a look at how feminism is perceived. According to…

    • 1213 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Feminine Mystique By Betty Friedan
    • 79 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Feminine Mystique By Betty Friedan

    Firstly exaplaining the term 'mystique' which means it is an aura of heightened value, interest, or meaning surrounding something, arising from attitudes and beliefs that impute special power or mystery to it. In 'The Feminine Mystique', Betty Friedan, a freelance writer and 1942 Smith graduate, intertwines anecdotes and observations from her own life with facts and analysis from her research, creating a work with which the feminine reader can readily identify. Her starting point was her own personal experience.…

    • 79 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Feminine Mystique
    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Feminine Mystique

    Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was first published in the United States in 1963 by W. W. Norton & Company. Friedan began writing this piece after she attended her fifteen-year college reunion at Smith, a woman's college. She prepared a questionaire for 200 of her classmates at this reunion. The results were as she expected; many American women were unhappy and did not know why. Many magazines did not want to post Friedan's results because it contradicted the original role of women and conventional assumptions about femininity. After this, Friedan spent five years researching and writing The Feminine Mystique. In this book, Friedan defines women's unhappiness as "The problem that has no name". She goes into detailed exploration of what she believes is the problem for these women. Friedan uses statistics, theories, and first-person accounts to show that the problem is the idealized image of women society has created, which she calls The Feminine Mystique. Women have been confined to the roles of a housewife and a mother, denying them education and career opportunitites. Friedan successfully proves that the feminine mystique denies women the opportunity to develop their own ideas by discussing women's educational process, effective look at media, and first-hand accounts with other women.…

    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Feminist Leaders In The 1960's
    • 149 Words
    • 1 Page

    Feminist Leaders In The 1960's

    After WWII, conservatism in American society revived. Along with numerous returning veterans, women were encouraged to go back home and be full-time housewives. Gradually, women’s freedom to choose their own lifestyle was deprived by restrictions and discriminations that they encountered in the society. Consequently, more than a decade later, feminist leaders in the 1960s generated a stronger voice to reveal the essential problem and inequality women faced and inspired all women to fight for the rights to take control of their own lives. Thus, in the 1960s, under the influence of various artistic works about women's liberation, including the book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, the song “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore, and the poem…

    • 149 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Feminism In The 20th Century
    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Feminism In The 20th Century

    Feminism: a topic of discussion in many homes and classrooms, which asserts the utmost attention amongst its listeners. A crazy ideal that believes women hold fundamental rights among men, and deserve the same treatment, the same opportunities. Feminism has grown since its conception in the early 20th century, and has catapulted upward in a grand and illustrious fashion, clinging to the souls of women who will no longer be oppressed by an abusive patriarchy. However, in this decade, feminism has become the topic of crude humor, has been made the punchline of jokes directed toward women. Feminism has become merely a way to generalize women as “crazy, hormonal monsters” who should never have a say in democracy because their “time of…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Feminist Theory In Canada
    • 177 Words
    • 1 Page

    Feminist Theory In Canada

    Feminist theory does not have one official definition and can take many different forms (Hick, 2010). Most feminists agree that all women in society have the right to obtain the same economic, political and social rights that their male counterparts experience (Hick, 2010). The belief that women are treated differently than men within society is a well-known phenomenon. Historically, the basis of feminist theory is presumed to have arisen out of the three waves of feminism (Hick, 2010). Women in Canada have made vast strides towards attaining more rights and resisting gender-based discriminatory beliefs and assumptions that aim to socially exclude women from reclaiming their womanhood (Mullaly, 2010). Women’s social position as subordinate…

    • 177 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    The Women's Role In The Civil Rights Movement
    • 1289 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Women's Role In The Civil Rights Movement

    This movement began with the release of a book published February 19, 1963. Betty Friedan accelerated the feminist movement and forever changed the Americans attitudes about the women’s role in society and launched Ms. Friedan into an influential and controversial figure in the women’s movement. Today, we all are equal because of these two revolutionary leaders of the Sixties. During the Sixties, sexism and abuse of women was the unspoken truth of society in that era. The publishing of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” brought these crimes out into the forefront and changed the lives of women forever. Women now are seen as strong as their counterparts in every aspect of life, including pay, careers and…

    • 1289 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    What Is The Women's Rights Movement In The 1960s?
    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages

    What Is The Women's Rights Movement In The 1960s?

    This book highlighted a lot of the vexation and anguish women felt when it came to social and politic inequality to men and it sparked the beginning of the women’s liberation movement (feminism) and second-wave feminism, which was a period where feminism was spread around the world. Protests followed soon after, giving way to new laws like the Roe v. Wade trial, which ruled that women had the right to have an abortion. American Society slowly changed its views and treatment of women, which was one of the biggest changes made when it came to gender…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics