Betty Friedan was born in 1921. She graduated from Smith College in 1942. She wanted to study psychology graduate degree from UC Berkeley. Instead, she becomes a housewife and mother in New York, writing articles for women’s magazines. Friedan then stayed to care for her family. She was not satisfied as a housewife and wondered if other women felt the same. So, she surveyed her peers from Smith College What she concluded became the Feminine Mystique. Women’s personal identity as mothers and housewife was not fulfilling enough. Women suffered frustration because their only responsibility was the children and husband without exploring their intelligence and abilities. (History.org)
Betty Friedan launches her nonfiction account of the twentieth-century
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She notes that women have few avenues for pleasure, intellect, or self-expression and that as the women’s roles became increasingly limited outside the home their interest in sex increased. Alfred Kinsey, the famous sex therapist, emerged to show that women and men alike were having more and better sex. The underside of this, Friedan writes, is that women seek fulfillment from sex to compensate for lives that are otherwise empty; thus, sex for women becomes a symptom of psychological hunger rather than attraction and pleasure. Once women’s “problem” had been exposed in the media, women began to show relief that their tension was finally being acknowledged. However, defining the problem is difficult. Friedan realizes the reason why: the media is part of the problem, because women’s magazines claim that women are finding happiness where, in fact, they are not. Friedan admits that as a writer for these magazines she has helped perpetuate the problem. Friedan researched women’s magazines before and after World War II and notes that during the 1930s women were portrayed as pioneering career women who had their own goals apart from or in addition to marriage and family. She describes the stereotype of the “New Woman,” who frequently appears in pre-war magazine articles and fiction as struggling with and succeeding at defining her own identity. These women are rarely, if ever, housewives; if they do marry, they frequently attract men who admire their strength and independence. Friedan cites examples among published fiction from the time, such as the tale of “Sarah and the Seaplane,” in which the protagonist, who is taking flying lessons, is asked if she is in love and if that is why she seems so preoccupied. On the day Sarah solos, she learns that what she loves is the ability
Scott, Anne Firor. Women in American Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Shi, David E. and Mayer, Holly A. For The Record.
What was the historical significance of Betty Friedan to the evolution of women’s rights in America in the 1960s? Women have always fought hard for their equality. Since the very first convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, countless women have joined together to try and improve the standard of life for all women within the United States. In the later years of the 19th century, women gathered behind activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with the hope of achieving voting rights of women under the Constitution. On August 26th, 1920, their goal was achieved with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Susan Oliver writes an exceptional biography that describes in detail the life, success, struggles and failures of Betty Friedan. From her childhood as a divergent American-Jew living in Peoria, Illinois to being an outstanding student and writer in school, finding her path as a strong feminist at Smith College, her struggles as a mother and wife to mothering the second feminist movement. Susan Oliver explored all the factors that contributed to Betty Friedan’s strong private and public persona. Betty Friedan, a driving force of the second feminist movement, is barely recognized for the emancipation of women. Mostly known as the author of the Feminine Mystique, Susan Oliver made sure to demonstrate that Betty Friedan was more than a mere
Society has had this concept of what women’s role in life should be since the beginning of time. For as long as anyone can remember, humanity expected women to stay at home, attend the men’s needs, and take care of household duties. Since society has evolved, women have more freedom, rights, and respect from others. However, there is still a small percentage who think women have a distinct place in life and shouldn’t drift from their “path”. In Twin Peaks and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”, women were treated as if they were irrelevant and melodramatic.
In Barbara Welters essay,”The Cult of True Womanhood”, she explains what a true woman is supposed to be. She speaks of the housewife appearance she must keep, and the duties that come with that. Both reading relate in the views of what
The search of identity is an issue familiar to contemporary society as well as to the society of 1963 when Betty Friedan published her feminist manifesto The Feminine Mystique. The main idea of Friedan 's article, "The Importance of Work," is the question of how individuals can recognize their full capacities and achieve identity. She argues that human identity is meaningful purposeful work, and individuals are not identified as women or men, just human based upon their work. Friedan believes work is what an individual does in his or her life; for example, snowboarding, songwriting, hockey, football etc. Friedan was an author, an activist, and the first president of the National Organization for Women.
In her essay, “The Importance of Work,” from The Feminine Mystique published in 1963, Betty Friedan confronts American women’s search for identity. Throughout the novel, Betty Friedan breaks new ground, concocting the idea that women can discover personal fulfillment by straying away from their original roles. Friedan ponders on the idea that The Feminine Mystique is the cause for a vast majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house; therefore, restricting them from discovering who they are as women. Friedan’s novel is well known for creating a different kind of feminism and rousing various women across the nation.
History, I was introduced to the work of Betty Friedan, a leading figure in the second wave of feminism in the United States. In addition to learning about her accomplishments, I was forced to instill into my mind the title of her most famous work of social commentary, The Feminine Mystique. Every instance in which her name came up I instantly associated it with her book, so much so that I felt the urge to read it. The work was ahead of its time in ideals that portrayed the values of feminism and the societal constraints on women. It showed how, in the 1950s and 1960s, women became increasingly unhappy with their stereotypical roles in American society.
Betty Friedan pushed for equal pay, unsexualized ads, maternity leave and childcare centers: women and men could both work outside the home. As an impact of that, The Feminine Mystique made the women’s rate of election into office increase due to the desire to get out of the house. Women began to vote more than men. Friedan’s book became a manifesto of change which inspired women’s activism and helped get women the right to vote. In the thoughts of Betty Friedan in her Feminine Mystique, “The key to the trap is, of course, education.
Based on class content such as readings and educational documentaries it is clear that women of all backgrounds share universal struggles, including how to deal with infused social standards. Over the course of the semester, hearing in depth recounts of not only practices forced upon females to make them adhere to certain beauty and purity standards but also witness access being denied to certain female groups (especially those of color) in order to keep women from progressing up the social and economic ladder has put the story, appearance and outlook of every woman in perspective. Each individual has to deal with a unique aspect of being female that has greatly affected her life in a way unfathomable for a male in America. Conducting an interview
The Unnamed Woman Up until the 1900’s woman had few rights, thus they relied heavily on men. Women could not vote, they could not own their own property, and very few worked. Women’s jobs were solely to care for children and take care of the home. Women during this time, typically accepted their roles in society and the economy ( “Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1909”).
The concept of motherhood and the role of women have existed since the beginning of time and throughout various points it has differ. There is no limit to what can be considered motherhood. To one person, motherhood might mean the act of raising children and taking care of their family, and to another; motherhood might be what defines them as a person. This is seen in Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” and the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In both stories, the main characters were dealing with the struggles of motherhood and being a wife.
The novel Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta and the magazine article, The Good Wife’s Guide, originally published in ‘Housekeeping Monthly’ in 1955, explore the gender roles of the stereotypical 1950’s housewife and how they should behave. These texts also investigate the idea that women are treated differently from men and some impacts that growing up in a sexist and single minded society can have on the youth of the community. Gender stereotyping someone is to discriminate them because of their gender, making the assumption that they obtain a certain characteristic or trait because of their gender. The Goods House Wife’s Guide is an eighteen point list that depicts how a wife in 1955 should act and all of the things she needs to
During the 1890’s until today, the roles of women and their rights have severely changed. They have been inferior, submissive, and trapped by their marriage. Women have slowly evolved into individuals that have rights and can represent “feminine individuality”. The fact that they be intended to be house-caring women has changed.
SUMMARY American poet, Linda Pastan, in her poem “Marks” published in 1978 addresses the topic of women’s roles in the household and asserts that although mothers may be good at their household job, their desire to fulfill other careers is overpowering and necessary to thrive. Pastan supports her claim by using vivid imagery, such as describing the grades she gets from her life job, a repeating pattern in the sentence structure, when listing what each of her family members grades her as, and connotative diction, when describing her feelings about being targeted in such a hardening and impersonal way. The author’s overall purpose is to inform readers that women were and still are being stereotyped, so that they might think about how they treat