BACHELOR THESIS Betty Friedan and The Problem That Had No Name - Karolina Ohlidalova

MASARYK UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Betty Friedan and the Problem That

Had No Name
Bachelor thesis
KAROLÍNA OHLÍDALOVÁ
Supervisor: Michael George, M.A.
Brno 2022
BETTY FRIEDAN AND THE PROBLEM THAT HAD NO NAME
Bibliografický záznam
Autor: Karolína Ohlídalová

Pedagogická fakulta
Masarykova univerzita
Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury
Název práce: Betty Friedan and the Problem That Had No Name
Studijní program: bakalářský
Studijní obor: Anglický jazyk se zaměřením na vzdělávání
Vedoucí práce: Michael George, M.A.
Rok: 2022
Počet stran: 72
Klíčová slova: ženská mystika, feminismus, hnutí za práva žen,
Americké ženy, 60. léta, žena v domácnosti, ženské
společenské role, sexuální diskriminace, poválečná
éra, USA
Bibliographic record
Author: Karolína Ohlídalová

Faculty of Education
Masaryk University
Department of English Language and Literature
Title of Thesis: Betty Friedan and the Problem That Had No Name
Degree Programme: bachelor’s
Field of Study: English Language for Education
Supervisor: Michael George, M.A.
Year: 2022
Number of Pages: 72
Keywords: the feminine mystique, feminism, women’s rights
movement, American women, 1960s, housewife,
female social roles, sexual discrimination, post-war
era, the USA
Abstract
During the 1950s and early 1960s, American housewives' widespread and
often silent dissatisfaction grew into a social issue nobody knew how to name.
The thesis deals with Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique, its
analysis of the problem that had no name, and its influence on the second
wave of American feminism. It also examines Betty Friedan's life and career,
as well as her motivations for writing the book. The thesis provides a deeper
insight into the history of women's fight for equal rights and focuses on the
challenges that accompanied American middle-class women in the post-war
era.
Key words
the feminine mystique; feminism; women’s rights movement; American

women; 1960s; housewife; female social roles; sexual discrimination;
post-war era; the USA
Anotace
V padesátých a na počátku šedesátých let 20. století přerostla rozšířená a často

tichá nespokojenost amerických žen v domácnosti ve společenský problém,
který nikdo neuměl pojmenovat. Práce se zabývá knihou Betty Friedanové s
názvem The Feminine Mystique (Ženská mystika), její analýzou tohoto
bezejmenného problému, a jejím vlivem na druhou vlnu amerického
feminismu. Zabývá se také životem a kariérou Betty Friedanové a jejími
motivy k napsání zmíněné knihy. Práce poskytuje hlubší vhled do historie
boje za ženská práva a zaměřuje se na problémy, které provázely americké
ženy ze střední třídy v poválečném období.
Klíčová slova
ženská mystika; feminismus; hnutí za práva žen; Americké ženy; 60. léta;
žena v domácnosti; ženské společenské role; sexuální diskriminace;
poválečná éra; USA
Declaration
“I hereby declare that I worked on my thesis independently, using only the

sources listed in the List of References.”
Prohlášení
Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím

pouze citovaných pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Discipli-
nárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se
zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s prá-
vem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění poz-
dějších předpisů.
Brno April 20, 2022 .......................................

Karolína Ohlídalová
Acknowledgement
I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor, Mr. Michael George, for his
valuable advice, pleasant communication, patience, and constant support.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents
Introduction 11
2 Feminism before The Feminine Mystique 13
3 Women in the post-war American society 20

3.1 Women in the labor force ....................................................................... 20
3.2 Baby boom and early marriage ............................................................ 22
3.3 The ideal of a housewife heroine ......................................................... 24
4 Betty Friedan and the making of The Feminine Mystique 28

4.1 Betty Friedan’s life, studies, and career ............................................ 28
4.2 Writing The Feminine Mystique ............................................................ 32
5 The Feminine Mystique 36

5.1 Introduction to the feminine mystique and the problem that
had no name ................................................................................................ 36
5.2 Women’s magazines and advertisement .......................................... 39
5.3 Sigmund Freud and the theory of "penis envy" ............................. 42
5.4 The "sex-directed education" ................................................................ 44
5.5 The "mistaken choice" ............................................................................. 47
5.6 The new life plan for women................................................................. 49
6 Betty Friedan and the feminist movement 52

6.1 Events following the publication ......................................................... 52
6.2 National Organization for Women ...................................................... 53
6.3 National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws ............... 56
6.4 The Equal Rights Amendment .............................................................. 58
6.5 Accomplishments of the women’s movement ................................ 62
7 Criticism of Betty Friedan 63

TABLE OF CONTENTS
8 Conclusion 68
List of References 70
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
The question of equality has been challenged repeatedly in the United

States since the beginning of colonization. For American women, who have
always been perceived predominantly as wives and mothers, this question has
arisen many times throughout history as they have tried to fight for equal
rights. The first crucial moment in the history of women's liberation was
undoubtedly the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and other female activists. At this first women's rights convention,
Stanton presented The Declaration of Sentiments and thus initiated the fight
for female suffrage. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which
in 1920 granted women the right to vote, feminism disappeared from the
scene, and women were once again perceived mainly in terms of their
biological function, despite finally having the right to vote. They usually
stayed at home taking care of the household and children, and although some
worked, it was often exclusively for economic reasons.
During World War II, women's social role temporarily changed when
females started being drawn into the workforce in large numbers. However,
this interest in women workers was nothing more than a substitute for the lack
of male employees since many men went to join the army. Nevertheless,
women took the jobs available with great passion, and at the end of the war,
many of them did not even want to give them up.
After the war, the life of American women started heading in two
opposite directions simultaneously. On the one hand, many women entered
the labor force, even though primarily for economic reasons, often leaving
their job as soon as their family's financial situation improved. On the other
hand, women were instructed to return to the peaceful comfort of the
11
INTRODUCTION
suburban home and care for their household and family. However, the second
direction was significantly more visible and prominent, which eventually
resulted in the trend of young marriage, increased birth rate, and romanticized
domesticity. "Occupation: housewife" became the synonym for feminine
fulfillment.
Nevertheless, society soon began to notice that something was not

right with the American homemakers. Despite the image of a happy suburban
housewife presented by all the media, many of these women seemed rather
depressed. Popular women's magazines started discussing "the housewife's
syndrome," and even many psychoanalysts had trouble identifying its causes.
It became "the problem that has no name."
This thesis looks back at the beginnings of American feminism,

tracking the changes in women's social roles and the main events that
influenced their development. It focuses primarily on Betty Friedan, a
life-long feminist from Peoria, Illinois, who in 1963 wrote the revolutionary
book called The Feminine Mystique. The thesis analyzes The Feminine
Mystique as a book presenting several aspects of societal pressure put upon
American middle-class women during the 1950s and early 1960s and its
profound impact on the expansion of women's roles in American society. The
primary goal of this thesis is to examine Betty Friedan's life experiences and
their role in the writing and message of her book, thus providing the reader
with a comprehensive picture of the origins of the second wave of American
liberal feminism.
12
FEMINISM BEFORE THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
2 Feminism before The Feminine Mystique
It is truly complicated, if not impossible, to delineate the exact beginning

of American feminism. Women stood up for themselves and tried to make
changes in the American society throughout the whole history, however, an
organized feminist movement did not occur in America until the middle of
the 19th century (Mendes, 2011, p. 3).
During the 1840s, many people, including women, were members of

abolitionist organizations trying to end slavery in the Southern states. Females
in such organizations, however, often faced sexual discrimination in their
everyday lives. Women in general were, at that time, "not allowed to vote,
practice law, demand custody of their children, sit on juries, or manage their
own financial affairs" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 286). After marriage, they legally
became one person with their husband and could barely do anything
independently. Furthermore, they were also discriminated against during the
conferences discussing slavery. For instance, "in 1838, the Grimké sisters,
touring New England Quaker meetings on behalf of abolition, were refused
. . . the right to speak in public" (Castro, 1990, p. 29). Then, in 1840, American
women delegates were excluded by the male organizers "from the floor of the
World Anti-Slavery Convention in London" (Barker-Benfield & Clinton,
1998, p. 221). Consequently, a group of American women led by Elizabeth
Cady Stanton decided to fight these inequalities and held "the first women's
rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York" in 1848 (Castro, 1990, p. 29).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the daughter of "a wealthy land-owner and
judge" (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 223) who "got his daughter the
best education then available" (Friedan, 1964, p. 86). Elizabeth was brilliant
at school, however, she could not attend college because it was considered
13
too unfeminine. Later, thanks to the frequent visits she made to her
abolitionist cousin, she became a member of the anti-slavery movement,
where she also met her future husband, Henry Stanton. Henry was one of the
leaders of the abolitionist campaign, and Elizabeth became his public
associate. However, although she was active in the movement, she spent most
of her time at home caring for the household and children. After moving to
Seneca Falls, New York, she started feeling frustrated by her homemaker role
and wanted something more from her life. In 1840, Elizabeth was one of the
female delegates who attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in
London. There, she met Lucretia Mott, a feminist who later became
Elizabeth's friend and partner in the fight for women's rights. After being
excluded from the Anti-Slavery Convention, these two women started
thinking about organizing a meeting that would specifically address women's
rights. Thus, the idea of the Seneca Falls Convention emerged (Barker-
Benfield & Clinton, 1998, pp. 223-224).
The convention that discussed "the social, civil, and religious condition
and rights of women" (Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 528) took place on
July 19, 1848, and was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott,
and three other women. At the public convention, Stanton presented the
Declaration of Sentiments, a paper that depicted the areas of life where
women were discriminated against and provided a list of resolutions to these
inequalities. The Declaration of Sentiments was directly inspired by the
Declaration of Independence passed in 1776. It used the same rhetoric and
structure, only was directed towards a different audience (Castro, 1990, p. 29;
Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 529). It provided several pieces of evidence of
men's oppression of women and insisted that women "have immediate
admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of
the United States" (Stanton, 1848). The inspiration from the Declaration of
14
Independence proved to be successful. At the end of the convention, "sixty-

eight women and thirty-two men signed the resolutions that Stanton had
prepared" (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 225).
Although the Seneca Falls Convention addressed many issues, including

the right to property or custody of children after divorce, its primary focus
was to raise awareness about the importance of women's right to vote.
This decision was, for that time, extremely radical, and even many women,
including those who organized the convention, did not want to support
women’s suffrage at first in order to avoid strong criticism. However, Stanton
insisted that the enfranchisement would be discussed. She saw it as essential
in the journey towards equality of men and women and knew that without it,
"women could not gain equal opportunity in any sphere of life" (Barker-
Benfield & Clinton, 1998, pp. 226, 235).
Therefore, the fight for women's enfranchisement began. After the Seneca
Falls Convention in 1848, women held women's rights conventions every
following year in different cities and states (Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 528).
However, the journey was, at first, a challenging one. Firstly, the women who
became active naturally had to face intense criticism. Secondly, even though
a lot of women sympathized with the arguments for women's suffrage, many
of them did not want to join the movement because they feared male
disagreement (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 227). But the most
significant difficulty were the extremely limited possibilities of these women.
In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan (1964) pointed out:
When women are considered to have no rights nor to deserve any, what
can they do for themselves? At first, it seemed there was nothing they
could do but talk. They held women's rights conventions every year after
1848. . . . They could talk till doomsday about the rights they did not have.
15
But how do women get legislators to let them keep their own earnings, or
their own children after divorce, when they do not even have a vote? How
can they finance or organize a campaign to get the vote when they have
no money of their own, nor even the right to own property? (p. 86).
It was, therefore, really hard for the women's movement to gain enough
public recognition and support to get the vote. An opportunity for success
came right at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The victory of the
northern states was associated with the end of slavery and with black suffrage,
and many female activists hoped to gain the right to vote together with people
of color (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 215). Therefore, in 1866,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy
Stone founded the American Equal Rights Association, which aimed "to
formalize the relationship between the abolitionist and woman's rights
movements and to take them into the next phase following the end of slavery"
(Orleck, 2014, p. 9). The association then aligned with the Republican Party,
which "accepted a petition for 'universal suffrage' – a plea to enfranchise
women and black men all at once – submitted by Stanton, Anthony, Stone,
and other New York activists" (Orleck, 2014, p. 10).
However, as Orleck (2014) noted, after Congress passed the Fourteenth

Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the summer of 1866, Stanton and
Anthony became doubtful about their alliance with the Republican Party.
Although the amendment promised "equal treatment under the law for all
Americans, . . . section 2 guaranteed the right to vote only to 'male' citizens."
Stanton and Anthony felt betrayed because the Republican Party did not
address this inequality, and they decided to eventually affiliate with the
Democratic Party, which argued that "black men should not get the vote
before white women" (p. 10). At the same time, however, the Democratic
16
Party used quite a racist rhetoric, and some of its members were supporters
of slavery during the Civil War. Therefore, by aligning with the Democrats,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton publicly went against her own abolitionist beliefs
only to secure the women's right to vote (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998,
pp. 228-229).
When in 1869, the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made it

unconstitutional to deny the right to vote "on the basis of race, color or
condition of previous servitude" (Orleck, 2014, p. 10), but once again did not
include women, Stanton and Anthony "abandoned party politics altogether
and formed an independent political organization in 1869: the National
Woman Suffrage Association [NWSA]." Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the
president of the NWSA and remained so until 1892 (Barker-Benfield &
Clinton, 1998, pp. 215, 221).
For the next three decades, raising awareness about feminism became the
main activity of the women's movement. In the 1870s, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton became "a traveling lecturer, spreading her feminist views across the
nation." Then, Anthony took over the role, and Stanton spent the last years of
her life writing. She died in 1902. (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 232).
In the meantime, new feminist organizations were being founded across the
United States, each contributing differently to the question of female suffrage.
Some were going door-to-door in their neighborhood, talking to people about
suffrage or asking them to sign petitions. Others were making speeches at
public transportation stations or were creating spontaneous outdoor meetings
for people who were neutral to the question of the female franchise and "who
would never have gone to a suffrage meeting on their own" (Kerber & De
Hart, 1991, p. 227). At the beginning of the 20th century, there were also
some more radical groups using nonviolent resistance, such as hunger strikes,
17
picket lines, or even chaining themselves to the fence of the White House
(Friedan, 1964, pp. 90-91). Fundamentally, the goal was to get as much public
attention and support as possible.
When the former NWSA, now called the National American Woman
Suffrage Association [NAWSA], "organized a giant parade to the Republican
National Convention being held in Chicago" in 1916, female suffrage was
already a public issue. Therefore, when ten thousand women attended the
parade, they automatically filled the headlines of newspapers and magazines,
including The New York Times, which informed that "some politicians felt
this was 'the pluckiest thing they ever knew women to do.'" Nevertheless,
although both the Republican and the Democratic Party eventually supported
the idea of female suffrage, they decided to let each state resolve the question
of women's enfranchisement for itself (Kerber & De Hart, 1991, pp. 330,
332). This decision, however, made the passage of an amendment to the
Constitution only postponed, not impossible. By 1917, NAWSA was an
association with the most extensive number of volunteers in the United States
(Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 333). Women in all the states that suddenly
allowed them to vote "used their suffrage to force the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment . . ., which
granted full voting rights to women, was ratified after nearly a century of hard
work, protest, and personal suffering" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 339).
After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified and women finally got the
vote, it seemed that there was nothing to fight for anymore. Many people,
including women, thought that by winning the right to vote, women were
ultimately equal to men and that there was no need to keep the women's
movement alive. Some women were still active, for example, in the fight for
black people's rights. However, nobody fought for women anymore as all
18
their rights were thought to have been won. Therefore, after 1920, feminism
became a "dead history" until it was brought up again in the 1950s and 1960s
when women came to realize that although "the feminists had destroyed the
old image of woman, . . . they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the
discrimination that still remained" (Friedan, 1964, p. 93).
19
WOMEN IN THE POST-WAR AMERICAN SOCIETY
3 Women in the post-war American society
3.1 Women in the labor force
The way American society perceived women and their roles underwent
several changes during World War II. Before the USA entered the war,
women were not expected to be pursuing professional careers, and their place
was predominantly in the home. The Great Depression in the 1930s even
intensified this view by making it difficult for women to work as they were
encouraged to leave the jobs available to men workers (Woloch, 1994,
p. 438). Although "by 1940 the percentage of women over sixteen in the labor
force had risen to 28.9" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 151), these women were
usually working primarily for economic reasons, not because they had
aspirations of becoming successful career women.
Participation of women in the labor force noticeably changed after the

outbreak of World War II. As millions of male workers quit their jobs to go
to war, women became increasingly wanted in typical "male" positions
(Chafe, 1975, p. 137). By 1942, women were encouraged to take jobs in many
areas of the defense industry, such as aircraft, engines, or any other military
equipment manufacture (Woloch, 1994, p. 460). These positions were often
advertised on posters with slogans like "We Can Do It!" and "Do the Job He
Left Behind" or in magazine stories that described jobs in the defense industry
as engaging and fulfilling (Honey, 1983, p. 677).
As an answer, "over 6 million women took jobs [during World War II],
increasing the size of the female labor force by over 50 percent" (Chafe, 1975,
p. 135). Even more fascinating was that most of these women were wives and
mothers – women who had never before sought occupation outside the home
in such numbers (Woloch, 1994, p. 462). Moreover, women not only took the
20
jobs available extremely quickly, but they were also very successful in them.
As Chafe (1975) stated, "The ease with which women assumed their new
responsibilities challenged many of the conventional stereotypes of women's
work. . . . Females had demonstrated that they could do a man's work and do
it well" (pp. 138-139).
Furthermore, as the war progressed, it started to appear that society's

values and the perception of a working woman could finally change. During
those five years, the government was persistently motivating women to take
the jobs available, and at the end of the war, there were more women workers
in some cities "than had been in the entire labor force in 1940" (Chafe, 1975,
p. 139). The stereotype of the impossibility of combining work, marriage, and
motherhood seemed to be fading, and women themselves were genuinely
enjoying their new responsibilities. As the Women's Bureau found, although
women who had never worked before the war had initially expected their jobs
to be only temporary, by the end of the war, "three out of four . . . wished to
remain at them" (Woloch, 1994, p. 466).
Nevertheless, this was eventually not the post-war reality. The different
attitude towards women workers was only temporarily caused by the war, not
by values transformation. When World War II ended in 1945, the division of
jobs into "male" and "female" returned. As a result, four million women lost
or left their jobs in the upcoming year. As Castro (1990) stated, "At the end
of World War II, American women represented 36.1 percent of the national
labor force. . . . In 1947, according to statistics published by the Women's
Bureau, American women represented only 27.6 percent" (p. 7).
Later, however, the postwar economic situation once again encouraged

women to seek employment. Eventually, the percentage of female workers
began to rise again. By 1950, "the proportion of women in the work force had
21
risen to 31 percent" (Woloch, 1994, p. 470). By 1960, "some 40 percent of

American women were employed in full- or part-time jobs" (Kerber & De
Hart, 1991, p. 501).
There were multiple reasons for this change. One of them was the
growing amount of job opportunities categorized as "female," such as
nursing, library, or clerical jobs, together with the rise of service jobs
opportunities that followed the post-war economic development (Frieze et al.,
1978, pp. 151-152). The main reason, however, was once again primarily
financial. Women did not seek employment for fulfillment or personal growth
but much more "out of 'necessity,'" for the maintenance of the middle-class
lifestyle, that is, "to purchase new homes or finance the education of their
youngsters," or simply "to help the household" (Chafe, 1975, p. 192). Betty
Friedan also mentions this in her book The Feminine Mystique. She points
out that although an increasing number of women held jobs, those jobs were
primarily of service or clerical type, and their purpose was simply to help
finance the household. "Fewer and fewer women were entering professional
work" (Friedan, 1964, p. 13).
3.2 Baby boom and early marriage
Another significant element of the postwar era was the return of

family life to the consolation provided by staying at home. As Friedan (1964)
described:
There was, just before the feminine mystique took hold in America,
a war, which followed a depression and ended with the explosion
of an atom bomb. After the loneliness of war and the unspeakableness
of the bomb, against the frightening uncertainty, the cold immensity
22
of the changing world, women as well as men sought the comforting

reality of home and children. (p. 174).
Moreover, thanks to the postwar economic expansion, many men

entered lucrative jobs, which enabled families to buy new homes and made
childcare much easier (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 146). As a result, both the
number of marriages and the birth rate went up immediately. In 1946, "more
marriages occurred than in any other year. And in 1947, the birthrate
accelerated" (Woloch, 1994, p. 468).
Not only that the number of marriages and newborns went up after
1945, but at the same time, the age of wives and mothers went significantly
down. As Friedan (1964) pointed out, "By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the
average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still
dropping, into the teens" (p. 12). "In 1958, more women married between
fifteen and nineteen than in any comparable age span" (Woloch, 1994,
p. 494), and in 1960, 67.2 percent of women from 20 to 24 years of age were
married (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 141). Also, in connection to the young
marriages, "The number of children born to teenagers rose 165 per cent
between 1940 and 1957, according to Metropolitan Life Insurance figures"
(Friedan, 1964, p. 175).
On the other hand, there were also many young people who did not
want to get married and have children. Early marriages, however, became the
new social norm after the war, and so did early parenthood. Both were
considered essential for a woman's satisfaction in life. Women who did not
want to enter marriages and become mothers were, therefore, often "pitied for
their incomplete lives" or felt "considerable social pressure from family and
friends to have children" (Frieze et al., 1978, pp. 147, 173).
23
3.3 The ideal of a housewife heroine
The postwar return to the home and the growing average number of
family members were strongly associated with another transformation of the
woman's social role. Her place was once again primarily in the home, where
she was expected to take care of the household and both her husband's and
children's happiness. Thanks to the economic growth after the war, families
were buying new houses and moving into the suburbs. Very soon, the picture
of a happy suburban housewife became the key to feminine fulfillment.
Stories of ambitious career women in women's magazines like Ladies' Home
Journal or McCall's that occurred before and during World War II were
replaced by stories of happy homemakers who stayed at home and cared for
their children while their husbands were in the outside world (Friedan, 1964,
pp. 32-43).
The "Occupation: Housewife," as Betty Friedan calls it in The

Feminine Mystique, was very strongly romanticized throughout the 1950s and
1960s. It showed the housewife as "a general practitioner . . . who decides
upon homemaking as her career" (Bowman, 1942, as cited in Friedan, 1964,
p. 121) and finds absolute fulfillment in the role of wife and mother while
having no responsibilities or leadership roles outside the home (Woloch,
1994, p. 496). Frieze et al. (1978) also argued that the idea of a woman who
dedicates all her time to her home and children was even supported by the
opinion that "children needed a good deal of care and attention from their
mothers" and that the "effects of 'maternal deprivation' . . . and lack of human
contact . . . would do irreparable harm to them." Women, therefore, accepted
this belief and devoted all their time to childcare and their household (p. 149).
However, as Woloch (1994) explained, these ideas did not have much
impact on older career women who had already been working since before
24
World War II. On the other hand, "it did have an impact on young middle-
class women who were deciding what to do with their lives" (p. 472). These
young women were, as Bowman argued, facing the dilemma of choosing
between a childless career life, a simple temporary job followed by marriage
and lifelong housewifery, and a combination of these two, even though the
third one appeared to be nearly impossible to manage (as cited in Friedan,
1964, p. 120).
This role conflict was even intensified by the persistent opinion that a
woman should work only if she needs to financially provide for her family,
not because she has personal career goals or wants to succeed in the outside
world (Woloch, 1994, p. 503). Women were usually "judged on the basis of
the success of their husbands" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 235) and were not
expected to achieve anything on their own. The "successful achievement"
was, in contrast, perceived as something "unfeminine" and inappropriate
(Frieze et al., 1978, p. 247). As Komarovsky pointed out, the ideal girl during
the postwar era was one who was able "to earn a living, but not so good a
living as to compete with men; capable of doing some job well . . . but not so
identified with a profession as to need it for her happiness" (as cited in
Friedan, 1964, p. 124). Therefore, as long as being successful was not
expected from young women, they had little to no motivation to achieve
anything.
As a result of the ideal of a happy domestic wife and zero expectations

from young women, female students started to take their education much less
seriously. As Friedan (1964) pointed out, although "more American women
than ever before were going to college," the percentage of female college
students compared to male students dropped "from 47 per cent in 1920 to 35
per cent in 1958." Furthermore, "two out of three girls who entered college
25
were dropping out before they even finished. . . . [either] to marry, or because
they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bar" (pp. 12, 142).
Furthermore, even those who did not drop out and continued with their studies
had little aspirations of having a career or were ready to give it up as soon as
it threatened their housewife role (Friedan, 1964, pp. 142-143).
The problem with this choice of housewifery above education was that
these women could not possibly know whether the domestic type of life with
no occupation outside the home would fulfill their needs or not. They simply
believed it and probably hoped for it. However, they often later realized that
it was a "mistaken choice," as Betty Friedan calls it in The Feminine Mystique.
These women were then even more unhappy in the housewife role than those
who never even had the possibility of attending college (Chafe, 1975, p. 200;
Friedan, 1964, p. 176), and they often later regretted their decision.
In 1947, the dilemma of American women got even more severe after
the publication of Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. This book, written by
sociologist Ferdinand Lundberg and psychiatrist Marynia Farnham, described
modern women as "a 'lost sex'. . . . frustrated, restless, bitter, hostile,
destructive," and as the cause of all severe societal problems. In the authors'
point of view, women were naturally "passive, dependent, . . . ill-equipped to
think for themselves, . . . or to take roles of leadership" (Burgum, 1947,
pp. 382-383). In other words, anatomy meant destiny, and women were by
nature destined to be tolerant wives and mothers. Therefore, all their attempts
to win equal rights were only efforts to imitate men. Lundberg and Farnham
also stated that "the women's rights movement . . . represented a neurotic
reaction to male dominance, a 'deep illness' which . . . attempted to persuade
women to seize a share of masculine power" (Chafe, 1975, p. 203). They also
argued that all feminists were, to a certain degree, driven by penis envy, a
26
concept designed by Sigmund Freud, explaining how girls were from early
childhood envious of the male sexual organ and, therefore, tried to imitate
men at least in other spheres of life (Chafe, 1975, p. 204; Frieze et al., 1978,
pp. 30-32). This book which, among other things, says that "the 'successful
woman' is only occasionally successful as a woman" (Kerber & De Hart,
1991, p. 499), became a bestseller in its year of publication and had a great
impact on young women's perception of their female roles.
27
BETTY FRIEDAN AND THE MAKING OF THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
4 Betty Friedan and the making of The

Feminine Mystique
4.1 Betty Friedan’s life, studies, and career
Betty Naomi Goldstein was born on February 4, 1921, and spent her
entire childhood in Peoria, Illinois, together with her parents and two younger
siblings (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 579). Both her parents were
Jewish immigrants from Europe, which was one of the things that made little
Betty different from other kids at school. Her father ran a jewelry shop, and
her mother was a full-time housewife, although she used to work "for the
society page of the local Peoria newspaper before she married" (Rotskoff,
2000, p. 122).
Friedan's childhood was, on the one hand, quite privileged as her

parents had enough money to afford a cook, a chauffeur, or multiple maids
who helped her mother with the household (Friedan, 2006, p. 19). On the
other hand, as Friedan (2006) described in her book Life So Far: A Memoir,
her parents' relationship and the way they raised their children sometimes
made her childhood challenging. Friedan's mother was strict and very critical.
She often made Betty feel like nothing she ever did was enough, and she "was
the most important person in the house. If she was in a good mood, everything
was fine. If she was in a bad mood, which . . . she was most often, we all
shrank from her" (Friedan, 2006, p. 18). Friedan later discovered, however,
that the reason why her mother was so unhappy with her life and therefore
"made our life so miserable" was that "she didn't have any work of her own
to do" (Friedan, 2006, pp. 15, 18). She was just a housewife who had given
up her career to take care of her family and had no interests outside the home
ever since. This observation profoundly affected Betty Friedan. As she later
28
pointed out, "my own feminism somehow began in my mother's discontent"

(Friedan, 1981, as cited in Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 581).
Another thing that influenced Friedan's childhood were the tensions

at home, mainly those between her parents. During the Great Depression, the
Friedan family, like most families, suddenly couldn't afford what they were
used to. Therefore, Betty's parents often argued about the family's financial
situation, and their relationship significantly worsened (Friedan, 2006, p. 19).
What kept Betty Friedan occupied most of the time and provided her
with some escape from the anxieties she experienced at home was school.
Betty was very curious as a child; she really enjoyed reading – so much that
her father sometimes considered it unfeminine – and she was one of the
smartest kids in her class (Friedan, 2006, pp. 19-20). Both her parents
supported her education, although each of them in a different way. Betty's
mother truly pushed her into studying and wanted her to accomplish "what
was denied to her" (Friedan, 2006, p. 32). She later persuaded Betty to go to
Smith College and wanted her to become a journalist like herself. On the other
hand, Betty's father was usually annoyed when he was supposed to pay her
tuition, and he never really expressed his support to her, even though he often
showed her accomplishments to his customers and was, in fact, proud of her
(Friedan, 2006, p. 49).
After finishing The Peoria High School in 1938, Friedan went to study
psychology at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts (Barker-
Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 579). Moving away from her hometown was
something she was genuinely looking forward to, and, as she later noted, "At
Smith, what had made me different in Peoria made me accepted, welcomed
by the other bright girls, one of the crowd, finally" (Friedan, 2006, p. 35).
Friedan not only studied really hard at college but also "served as a writer
29
and, eventually, as editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper," which helped

her discover her leadership abilities (Rotskoff, 2000, p. 123). At Smith, she
also gained knowledge in various areas, most of which she later used to write
The Feminine Mystique. These areas included "creative writing, progressive
politics, psychology, and the challenges facing women" (Rotskoff, 2000,
p. 123), as well as "psychology of personality, Freud and Adler and Jung and
their American followers" (Friedan, 2006, p. 46). Smith College was also
crucial in creating Friedan's political views as she worked there with several
leftist professors who influenced the way she perceived the world (Rotskoff,
2000, p. 123).
In 1942, Friedan "graduated summa cum laude" in psychology and

continued to the University of California in Berkeley, where she "won a grant
to work with the psychologist Erik Erikson" (Barker-Benfield & Clinton,
1998, p. 581). After a year at Berkeley, "she got another grant, opening a
highway to a Ph.D. and a professional career in psychology" (Barker-Benfield
& Clinton, 1998, p. 581), which she, after all, decided not to use. As she later
described, the reason for this decision was that she could not imagine her
future after finishing college and felt that she lacked "a sense of professional
identity" (Woloch, 1994, p. 484). Therefore, instead of continuing with
education, Friedan "moved to New York in 1943 and got my first job at
Federated Press, a news agency serving labor unions and liberal and radical
newspapers" (Friedan, 2006, p. 63). After World War II, however, as men
started returning to the labor force, Betty Friedan was fired and replaced by a
returning veteran. She then found another job and worked for the next six
years "as a reporter and editor on the U.E. News, the official publication of
the United Electrical Workers, one of the most progressive of labor unions
then" (Friedan, 2006, p. 64).
30
During that time, Betty met Carl Friedan, whom she married in 1947,
and with whom she had her first child in 1948 (Friedan, 2006, pp. 69, 73).
After giving birth to her first son, Daniel, Friedan kept working in the UE
News until she was fired when she got pregnant for the second time (Woloch,
1994, p. 484). As she later noted, "It was unfair . . . to fire me just because I
was pregnant. . . . I even tried calling a meeting of the people in the union
where I worked. It was the first personal stirring of my own feminism, I
guess" (Friedan, 1998, p. 17). On the other hand, Friedan also admitted that a
part of her was, in fact, relieved to lose her job, as she "had begun to feel so
guilty working" and was looking forward to dedicating her time to her family
(Friedan, 1998, p. 17).
After her second son Jonathan was born in 1952, the Friedan family
decided to move to the suburbs of Rockland County, New York, and Betty
Friedan suddenly became a suburban housewife. At the beginning of their life
in Rockland County, Friedan was "determined to be 'fulfilled as a woman'"
(Friedan, 1981, as cited in Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 581), and she
"embraced motherhood and housewifery eagerly" (Barker-Benfield &
Clinton, 1998, p. 581). However, as time passed, Friedan started realizing that
to be just a housewife was not precisely what she had imagined it to be. She
started feeling bored and frustrated and assumed that she needed some
additional occupation outside the home (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p.
581). Therefore, Friedan became freelance writing for various women's
magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, McCall's, and Mademoiselle, where she
composed articles on topics connected to domesticity and feminine
fulfillment. However, she eventually began to realize that the pieces she was
writing had stopped appearing so plausible to her. She felt that something was
not right. And that was when the idea of writing something like The Feminine
Mystique emerged for the first time (Woloch, 1994, p. 484).
31
4.2 Writing The Feminine Mystique
In 1956, as her third child – a daughter called Emily – was born,

Friedan decided to compose an extensive questionnaire of the Smith College
class of 1942, which she herself used to attend, and sent it to all her former
classmates. This survey intended to determine how satisfied the women who
graduated from Smith College in 1942 were with their lives and to "disprove
the growing belief that education made women 'masculine,'" or "caused
unnecessary conflicts and frustrations" (Friedan, 1964, p. 345). However, as
Friedan later stated, the responses of her former classmates "raised such
strange questions" about the role of women in society (Friedan, 1998, p. 18).
They made her realize that "the critics [of female education] were half-right;
education was dangerous and frustrating – but only when women did not use
it" (Friedan, 1964, p. 345). In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan describes:
Of the 200 women who answered that questionnaire in 1957, 89 per

cent were housewives. They had lived through all the possible
frustrations that education can cause in housewives. But when they
were asked, 'What difficulties have you found in working out your
role as a woman? . . . What are the chief satisfactions and frustrations
of your life today? . . . How have you changed inside? . . . How do
you feel about getting older? . . . What do you wish you had done
differently? . . .' it was discovered that their real problems, as women,
were not caused by their education. In general, they regretted only one
thing – that they had not taken their education seriously enough, that
they had not planned to put it to serious use. (Friedan, 1964, p. 345).
Since the survey also found that 60 percent of the women who
responded to the questionnaire "did not find the occupation of homemaker
'totally fulfilling'" (Woloch, 1994, p. 484), Friedan decided to investigate the
32
widespread unsatisfaction of the American housewives in more detail. After

finishing the Smith College class survey, she already had in mind the idea of
what the "feminine mystique" was probably all about. However, she decided
to prove her assumptions through a number of elaborate interviews and
started examining "the problem that has no name" from several different
points of view. She immersed herself in research on identity issues and
"current studies about women" (Woloch, 1994, p. 485) and analyzed stories
in popular women's periodicals (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 582).
She interviewed "educators at women's colleges, editors and former editors
of women's magazines, experts in advertising, . . . psychologists,
psychiatrists, anthropologists, and sociologists," as well as many women of
different age groups. She talked to "high school students, college students . .
., young housewives and mothers, and women of her own age, about forty"
(Woloch, 1994, pp. 485-486).
The data Friedan collected demonstrated "that the problem that has no
name was shared by countless women in America" (Friedan, 1964, p. 15).
She found that young female college students were not pursuing challenging
education or successful careers because "a girl who got serious about anything
she studied – like, wanting to go on and do research – would be peculiar,
unfeminine" and because "those things don't matter when you're married"
(two senior students at the Smith College, 1959, as cited in Friedan, 1964,
p. 145). Therefore, instead of education, these young women sought early
marriages hoping that housewifery and suburban middle-class lifestyle would
provide them with feminine fulfillment. Unfortunately, as Friedan's research
ascertained, they only later realized that being just a wife and mother and
nobody else is, in many cases, more likely to bring frustrations than
the promised happiness. As one of the interviewed women described,
"I remember my own feeling that life wasn't full enough for me. . . . It wasn't
33
enough, making a home. . . . You can't just deny your intelligent mind; you
need to be part of the social scheme" ("a mental-health educator who was for
many years 'just a housewife' in her suburban community," as cited in
Friedan, 1964, p. 332).
Therefore, in 1958, Friedan started writing the book she later called
The Feminine Mystique. At first, she wanted to address the issue through a
magazine article that would describe the central theory of the problem that
had no name together with her observations and research. However, none of
the women's magazines that used to cooperate with Friedan – such as
McCall's or Ladies Home Journal – wanted to publish such a paper. They all
found it inconceivable or extreme, and they refused to print it. Only a single
women's magazine, Good Housekeeping, agreed in 1960 to publish a short
Friedan’s article called Women Are People, Too. This essay thoroughly
explained the gist of Friedan's idea and even provided the reader with some
citations from the interviews she conducted with middle-class housewives.
Naturally, the article received both positive and negative responses. A few
readers replied to the article saying that its message did not resonate with
them at all, however, many more letters stated that the article made the
women who read it feel like they were finally not alone. These confirmatory
responses even reinforced Friedan's theory, and she, therefore, continued
writing her book (Friedan, 1998, p. 18; Woloch, 1994, p. 486).
As Friedan later states in her book It Changed My Life: Writings on

the Women's Movement, the five years she spent writing The Feminine
Mystique were, in some ways, very challenging for her. She spent a
significant amount of time in the New York Public Library, where she
"endured jokes . . . from the professional writers . . . because I was writing a
book about women, of all things!" (Friedan, 1998, p. 18). Moreover, the very
34
few people who knew that she was writing the book, including her husband,
publisher, and colleagues, did not even believe that she "would ever finish it"
(Friedan, 1998, p. 19). Despite all this, Friedan became genuinely devoted to
completing her work. She was working on it "every day, on the dining-room
table, while the children were in school, and after they went to bed at night,"
and to avoid any other disapproval, she would even hide the book "when my
suburban neighbors came for coffee" (Friedan, 1998, pp. 13, 19). Finally,
after five years of intense research and hard work, The Feminine Mystique
was first published in February 1963.
35
THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE
5 The Feminine Mystique
5.1 Introduction to the feminine mystique and the

problem that had no name
Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique comprises fourteen chapters,

each discussing a different aspect of what she called "the feminine mystique."
This term refers to the general assumption of the American society that
women could experience satisfaction in life only as wives and mothers, and
that their whole life should be directed towards these two exclusive roles they
were meant to play. Women were not expected to get higher education, look
for challenging job positions, or have political opinions simply because they
would not need them once they became wives and mothers. If a woman
wanted to be something more than "just a housewife" or had any career
ambitions, she was perceived as unfeminine and often pitied for her
incomplete life. Betty Friedan decided to discuss this issue and addressed the
main reasons why the feminine mystique became so powerful, how it was
maintained in the minds of the American people, and what women could do
to "break out of the housewife trap and truly find fulfillment as wives and
mothers – by fulfilling their own unique possibilities as separate human
beings" (Friedan, 1964, p. 325).
The Feminine Mystique opens with a chapter dedicated to "the

problem that has no name," which is a term Friedan used to refer to the
widespread but often silent unhappiness of American housewives in the
1950s and early 1960s. This unhappiness was described as a "sense of
boredom and passivity" (Bowlby, 1987, p. 120), a lack of identity, or an
"undefined wish for 'something more'" than just cooking, cleaning, and taking
care of the husband and children (Friedan, 1964, p. 54). This problem was, at
36
that time, shared by many middle-class women. Because of societal pressure,

however, many of these unhappy housewives kept the feeling of emptiness to
themselves. Instead, they often felt alone in their situation and thought that
something had to be wrong with them. Nevertheless, as Friedan (1964)
pointed out, a woman who felt that way was, in fact, only "so ashamed to
admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared
it" (p. 15). Furthermore, she could not even name it because she never talked
about it with anyone else. None of these women really understood what they
were experiencing or how exactly they should call it. That is why it became
a problem with no name (Friedan, 1964, p. 194).
When the issue started spreading among more and more American
homemakers, many started seeking professional help. As Frieze et al. (1978)
noted, "married women form the most heavily represented group in
psychiatric treatment. They use both hospitalization and private
psychotherapy more than any other group" (p. 259). Furthermore, as the
number of unhappy housewives rose, many specialists became interested in
what was going on. They found that the most common symptoms of "the
housewife's syndrome" were tiredness, anger, "crying without any reason,"
and feelings of emptiness or even of nonexistence (Friedan, 1964, p. 16).
Therefore, although the image of marriage, motherhood, and a house in the
suburbs promised absolute happiness to young girls, more and more people
in the 1960s started to realize that that was eventually not the case.
There were several reasons for it. First of all, as Frieze et al. (1978)
pointed out, housewifery was incredibly isolating. These suburban
homemakers were "cut off from contact with other adults since they have no
coworkers. This isolation tends to . . . make these women more susceptible to
psychological problems" (p. 139). This idea was supported by Friedan as
37
well. In The Feminine Mystique, she mentions that a housewife cannot deny
the fact that "the world is indeed rushing past her door while she just sits and
watches. The terror she feels is real, if she has no place in that world"
(Friedan, 1964, p. 325).
Secondly, the housewife role was also very stereotypical and provided
no space for the examination of one's identity. In the first chapter, Friedan
mentions how the women who dedicated all their time to their household and
children found themselves in an endless cycle of cooking, washing dishes,
ironing, cleaning, shopping, and playing, but they hardly ever had time for
any activity which would help them find their place in the world. As one of
the women Friedan interviewed told her, "I begin to feel I have no personality.
I'm a server of food and putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who
can be called on when you want something. But who am I?" (a mother of four
who left college at nineteen to get married, as cited in Friedan, 1964, p. 17).
Many other women told Friedan that they lacked a sense of identity, did not
know who they were, or had one day woken up and realized that "there's
nothing to look forward to" (a twenty-three-year-old mother, as cited in
Friedan, 1964, p. 17). Journalist Edith M. Stern also criticized this aspect of
housewifery, even fourteen years before the publication of The Feminine
Mystique. In her article Women are Household Slaves, she wrote that "the
housewife's opportunities for advancement are nil; the nature and scope of
her job, the routines of keeping a family fed, clothed and housed remain
always the same" (Stern, 1949, p. 72). Therefore, the housewife rarely had
any chance to do something truly challenging or something that would help
her develop her own identity.
And finally, since these women were isolated from the outside world
and spent all their time with their children, it was then even harder for them
38
to realize that those children would grow up and would not need them
anymore. A survey mentioned by Frieze et al. (1978) demonstrated that the
occurrence of depression among American mothers "was highest among
women whose lives were most child-centered. These women viewed
child-rearing as the single focus of their lives. When their children grew up, .
. . their lives lost much of their meaning" (p. 268). Perhaps if these women
had been given a chance to develop some interests outside the home, they
could have coped better with their children's departure and continued to
expand their potential from that point on. But as Friedan explains, society did
not allow women to develop an occupation outside the home. According to
her, the feminine mystique told them that by desiring something more than
just a pretty house and happy husband and kids, they put their family aside
and, therefore, were not good wives and mothers (Friedan, 1964, p. 340).
Stern criticizes this idea in her article as well. As she pointed out:
One much stressed point is the satisfaction every good woman feels
in creating a home for her dear ones. Well, probably every good
woman does feel it, perhaps because she has had it so drummed into
her that if she does not, she is not a good woman. (Stern, 1949, p. 73).
Thus, not only were these women unhappy in their stereotypical and isolating
female role with no opportunity to develop other interests, but they could not
even admit it or talk about it because it would mean that they were not able
to succeed even in this single role they were ascribed.
5.2 Women’s magazines and advertisement
In the second chapter called The Happy Housewife Heroine, Betty

Friedan depicts how the image of a satisfied homemaker was perpetuated in
women's magazine stories and articles. She describes the changes these
39
articles underwent during the wartime and explains how significant the role
of women's magazines was in the housewife's life. In her book, Friedan
focuses primarily on the leading women's magazines back then, particularly
McCall's, Ladies' Home Journal, and Redbook. She shares a few articles and
magazine stories written before or during World War II, in which women
were presented as ambitious, successful, and independent. The characters
were either young girls excited about their future or adult women combining
work and family life. But most importantly, they were all creating a life of
their own and were a part of the community in which they lived. (Friedan,
1964, pp. 32-35).
On the contrary, articles and stories written in the post-war era were
the exact opposite. As the families returned to the comfort of home and the
baby boom began, women's magazines started to romanticize domesticity and
completely abandoned the possibility of a working wife and mother. The
articles were all about cooking or cleaning, how to keep the husband and kids
happy, how to decorate the house, or what kind of new household appliances
to buy. But there was not a single mention of any career life or even any
information about what was going on in the world. Friedan strongly criticizes
this image in her book. She condemns that at the time when "men were trained
to travel into outer space; . . . a plane whose speed is greater than the speed
of sound broke up a Summit Conference," or when "astronomers, because of
new radio telescopes, had to alter their concepts of the expanding universe,"
women's magazines, "published for over 5,000,000 American women, almost
all of whom have been through high school and nearly half to college,
contained almost no mention of the world beyond the home" (Friedan, 1964,
p. 31).
40
The reason for not including any information from the outside world
in women's magazines was, according to Friedan, relatively simple. She noted
that when she had begun to contribute to some of the women's magazines in
the 1950s, "it was simply taken for granted . . . and accepted as an immutable
fact . . . that women were not interested in politics, life outside the United
States, national issues, art, science, ideas, adventures, education, or even their
own communities" (Friedan, 1964, p. 42). Since the end of the war, women
were perceived only as fragile homemakers whose only interests were
connected to their female role.
This sudden change in the content of women's magazines and the

assumptions about their interests might have been caused by several factors.
One idea suggests that these magazines only reflected how society perceived
women and their social role in different parts of the American history. Naomi
Wolf presents this point of view in her book The Beauty Myth. She remarks
that "women's magazines . . . have been one of the most powerful agents for
changing women's roles, . . . they have consistently glamorized whatever the
economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at
that moment from women" (Wolf, 1991, p. 64). Another viewpoint is
presented by Friedan, who also decided to examine the reasons behind the
change. She found that the articles about ambitious career women written
during the world war era were composed mainly by female writers. These
women, however, became housewives after the end of the war, and they were
replaced by male writers and editors who started composing publications
enforcing the domestic idea of an ideal woman (Friedan, 1964, p. 47).
Another significant contributor to the image of a cheerful homemaker

was the advertisement. In a chapter called The Sexual Sell, Friedan explains
how the advertisers manipulated American housewives into buying more and
41
more household appliances by offering them "specialized products for

specialized tasks." She describes her interview with a professional marketer
who wrote several reports on how to sell as many household products as
possible. She uncovers how the advertisers wanted women to believe "the
illusion that she has become 'a professional, an expert in determining which
cleaning tools to use for specific jobs.'" Furthermore, Friedan states that the
advertisers even stressed the "therapeutic value" of baking with the
brand-new household appliances, thanks to which the housewife would
become "a different woman." Generally, the advertisers' goal was to provide
the housewives with "a sense of achievement" as compensation for a job that
was, in fact, boring and not challenging at all. They aspired to make
housework look like "a matter of knowledge and skill, rather than a matter of
brawn and dull, unremitting effort" (Friedan, 1964, pp. 198-206).
5.3 Sigmund Freud and the theory of "penis envy"
The next crucial element of Friedan's book is the criticism of Sigmund

Freud and his concept of "penis envy." As Frieze et al. (1978) remarked,
during the beginning of the twentieth century, "a dramatic change took place
in psychology, which revolutionized the way in which psychologists look at
the human mind. The person responsible for this was Sigmund Freud; his
ideas formed the basis of psychoanalytic theory" (p. 28). This theory and its
subsequent use in practice as a psychiatric treatment method was based on
the interpretation of rememberings and dreams "with an attempt to look
behind them through association to unconscious memories of childhood.
Freud believed that the adult problems of his patients had their origins in their
early childhood conflicts" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 33). During his practice,
Freud collected data from his primarily adult patients, and he constructed the
theory of "penis envy." This theory introduced the idea that all women's
42
neuroses and psychological problems were rooted in their childhood trauma

of discovering that they lacked the male sexual organ and were therefore
condemned to be forever inferior to men (Frieze et al., 1978, pp. 30-31).
In Friedan's view, the concept of being envious of one's sexual organ

was absurd. She strongly criticized Freud’s assumptions that female problems
were either purely sexual or at least connected to the natural inferiority
destined by anatomy. Nevertheless, she also admitted that Freud's idea was,
at its core, not entirely mistaken and that it even provided a valuable insight
into the society in which he lived. She remarked that "If one interprets penis
envy . . . in the light of our new knowledge that what Freud believed to be
biological was often a cultural reaction, one sees simply that Victorian culture
gave women many reasons to envy men." According to her, if independence,
autonomy, and other qualities are denied to women but, at the same time, are
enjoyed by men, then it is totally normal for these women to feel envious or
even to want to become like men (Friedan, 1964, pp. 108-109). The same idea
was expressed by Burgum (1947), who compared women's envy with any
man's "wish to be the millionaire who owns his factory or the successful
insurance manager next door.” In her article reviewing Farnham and
Lundberg's Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, she discusses how envy is one of
the natural responses to the experience of wanting something other people
possess, not an attribute of maladjusted women who are desperate to imitate
men in any possible way (p. 386). Thus, according to Friedan, these unhappy
women only showed a natural reaction to the system in which they lived. As
she stated, "Society as it was then, by explicit denial of education and
independence, prevented women from realizing their full potential" (p. 109).
Freud, however, was able to explain these problems only in terms of female
biology because that was how society perceived women back then.
43
Therefore, although Freud was one of the most influential sociologists

who analyzed crucial problems of the human personality, he was "a prisoner
of his own culture" and was able to interpret his observations only "in the
scientific framework of his own time" (Friedan, 1964, p. 97). The fact that
many psychoanalysts who treated women in the 1950s and 1960s still used
Freudian methods was, according to Friedan, quite disturbing. Although
society progressed, women were still perceived mainly in terms of their
biological function. They were frequently advised on how to adapt to their
role of wife and mother instead of getting the opportunity to develop an
individual identity. However, as Friedan (1964) remarked, the "increasing
knowledge" and the number of possibilities of modern times "has given us an
awareness of purposes and goals beyond the simple biological needs" that
were suddenly a "part of a more complex pattern of human life," and should
not be perceived as its only purpose (p. 135).
5.4 The "sex-directed education"
Another powerful aspect of the feminine mystique was what Friedan

called "the sex-directed education." This term described the fact that boys and
girls were, from a very young age, prepared by their educators for opposite
future social roles. Generally, in the history of the United States, women were
never expected to pursue a long-term career. Even during World War II, when
women held more jobs than ever before, they were expected to return home
and be replaced by men once the war was over. As mentioned in Chapter 3.1,
society accepted working women only if they needed to provide financially
for their families. Furthermore, these women were also expected to leave the
workforce once their family's financial situation improved.
44
After World War II, however, the negative image of a working woman
was even enforced by the claim that education and career could be dangerous
for women's femininity. Farnham and Lundberg's Modern Woman: The Lost
Sex warned the American society that education and career life inevitably led
to the "masculinization of women with enormously dangerous consequences
to the home, the children dependent on it and the ability of the woman, as
well as her husband, to obtain sexual gratification" (Farnham & Lundberng,
1947, as cited in Friedan, 1964, p. 37). As this assumption started to spread,
almost every girl in the 1950s began to receive the message that she should
not get "seriously interested, in anything besides getting married and having
children, if she wanted to be normal, happy, adjusted, feminine, [and] have a
successful husband [and] successful children" (Friedan, 1964, p. 148).
Colleges were offering easy and "intellectually unchallenging" programs for
female students, including courses such as "Adjustment to Marriage" or
"Education for Family Living," which only enforced the message once again
(Bowlby, 1987, p. 63). This point was also mentioned by Chafe (1975), who
stated that multiple presidents of American colleges "urged women to
specialize in disciplines like home economics, child development, and
interior decorating," or "advocated that 'the task of creating a good home and
raising good children' be raised to the dignity of a profession and made the
primary purpose of women's colleges" (p. 208). If a female student wanted to
choose a more challenging program at college, she was usually advised "that
it was a waste of time" and that she would probably not really use it in the
future anyway (Friedan, 1964, p. 153). Some of the students Friedan
interviewed even told her that they had wanted to continue with their
education at first but had suddenly started feeling guilty about being the only
girl in the laboratory or were afraid that too much education would deprive
them of the opportunity to find a husband (Friedan, 1964, p. 147).
45
According to Friedan (1964), boys were, on the contrary, expected to

develop an individual identity and accept challenging opportunities that
would enable them to master their knowledge and help them find their place
in the world of work. They were encouraged to grow, to improve their skills,
and then to decide how they wanted to contribute to society (p. 157). Girls,
however, were denied these opportunities. They were not encouraged to
realize their individual abilities and talents that could be used in professional
practice. They were "kept from seeing themselves as unique human beings,
distinct from others. All females participated equally in the undifferentiated
roles of housewife and mother, but many lacked a more precise image of
themselves as individuals" (Chafe, 1975, p. 229).
As a result, young female students not only lacked the motivation to

exert themselves in challenging courses, but many of them even became
afraid of being too successful. As Woloch (1994) pointed out, research by
psychologist Matina Horner made in the 1960s revealed that "80 percent of
the college women in her samples . . . felt that any kind of achievement, in
college or career, would undercut their attractiveness and limit their options"
(p. 507). This "fear of success" was mainly caused by the connection society
made between women's professional achievement and the loss of their
femininity (Frieze et al., 1978, pp. 238, 247).
In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan criticizes the consequences of

such "sex-directed education" and the resulting fear of success that many
female students experienced. She states, for example, that in the 1950s, of all
high-school graduates who did not continue to college, "two out of three were
girls" (Friedan, 1964, p. 153). Furthermore, even of those girls who continued
to college, almost all wanted to become suburban homemakers (Friedan,
1964, p. 142). Eventually, "only thirty-seven per cent of the women
46
graduated, in contrast to fifty-five per cent of the men." Girls were, therefore,
not only attending college less often but were also more likely not to finish it.
They were, however, not dropping out because they would not have the
intelligence to continue. In fact, girls were "less likely to be dropped from
college for academic failure. Women drop out . . . either to marry or because
they fear too much education is a 'marriage bar'" (Friedan, 1964, p. 154).
Therefore, as was stated in Chapter 3.2, many of these girls got married and
became mothers at a very young age. That caused the already described baby
boom, which contributed to the annual population growth in the United States
becoming one of the highest in the world (Friedan, 1964, p. 155).
5.5 The "mistaken choice"
Friedan wanted the readers to understand that the girls who chose
domesticity and life-long housewifery above education and career often only
decided for a way of life that appeared easier and secure at first but eventually
ended up being even more challenging, particularly for their mental health.
She did, however, sympathize with these girls and expressed understanding
of their choice. As she noted, all the girls 1950s and early 1960s grew up in a
society where it was undoubtedly difficult for a woman to be successful.
Everybody expected girls to become wives and mothers, and many judged
them when they wanted to achieve something more. Furthermore, girls were
not even used to being independent. They had always been taken care of.
Therefore, it was much easier for them to jump into marriage and "to seek the
sanctuary of the home" than to become self-reliant and live independently
(Friedan, 1964, pp. 193, 195).
However, although Friedan understood the reasons behind the choice

of housewifery above education, it was, according to her, a "mistaken
47
choice." Many women who made that choice soon realized that the domestic
type of life was not what they had imagined it to be and that they lacked a
true identity and a place in the world. As Castro (1990) remarked, "In
choosing the 'feminine mystique' model of womanhood, American women . .
. had refused all mental growth. . . . The Housewife's Syndrome was. . .
reinterpreted as an identity crisis, and the dissatisfied housewife was no
longer an anomaly (p. 16).
Furthermore, Friedan also described the long-term consequences of

such a choice on the housewife's family. According to her, many unhappy
housewives who suffered the problem with no name became obsessed with
motherhood. Since the identity of a mother and a caretaker was the only role
they played in life, they often overprotected their children and therefore
deprived them of the opportunity to become self-reliant. These children were
then emotionally dependent on their mothers and could rarely do something
on their own (Friedan, 1964, p. 194). Apart from that, "most sociologists
agree that children learn their future sex roles by observing their parents"
(Chafe, 1975, p. 235). Thus, whether the mother worked or not affected the
way her children perceived themselves and others.
Friedan, therefore, strongly emphasized the fact that education and

career were essential for the personal growth of all people, regardless of their
sex. According to her, "with or without education, women are likely to fulfill
their biological role, and experience sexual love and motherhood. But without
education, women or men are not likely to develop deep interests that go
beyond biology" (Friedan, 1964, 155). She also insisted that career and
motherhood could be managed simultaneously. However, every woman, as
well as man, should first develop other interests, gain some real-life
experience and knowledge, and become self-sufficient before committing
48
themselves to other people. Only then will marriage be for them "an activity
in which they will voluntarily choose to participate rather than something that
is necessary for any sense of personal identity" (Friedan, 1964, p. 169).
Therefore, combining career and family life was not only possible but
also beneficial for both the housewife and her family. Frieze et al. (1978)
discussed that "part-time employment for women with school-age children is
related to the highest marital satisfaction" and that working women "show
significantly higher levels of self-esteem (whether married or single) than
their homemaker counterparts" (p. 177). This difference in self-esteem levels
was largely caused by the fact that when a woman defined herself only in
terms of her biological role, then there was for her a higher risk of feeling
depressed whenever she experienced dissatisfaction in this role or once this
role came to an end (Frieze et al., 1978, pp. 180, 265). On the other hand, the
working mothers whose lives were comprised of multiple roles were usually
much more sure of themselves. They were more aware of their abilities, and
even if they experienced a failure in one of the roles, they still knew where
their place in the world was. Moreover, the job that kept working women
generally more satisfied did not even have to be particularly demanding. It
was enough if a woman saw it as meaningful and if it provided her with some
space to grow. Even women holding inferior job positions "gained a sense of
achievement from their work" (Chafe, 1975, p. 220).
5.6 The new life plan for women
In the last chapter of The Feminine Mystique, Friedan introduces what

she calls "a new life plan for women." This life plan was neither an invitation
to a new women's movement nor did it encourage women to initiate one.
Friedan's only intention was for her readers to start thinking about themselves
49
as individual human beings capable of taking their lives into their own hands
(Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, pp. 584-585; Friedan, 1964, p. 332). She
reiterated that she understood how much easier it was for women to stay at
home and avoid the initial discomfort of becoming self-sufficient. She also
reminded the housewives that it would not be straightforward to abandon the
mystique after being a victim of it for such a long time. She admitted that
"there is always the sense of loss that accompanies change" but, at the same
time, wanted the women who were unhappy in their housewife role to
understand that if they did not make the change, they would eventually lose
so much more (Friedan, 1964, pp. 330, 342).
Friedan also focused on reminding her readers that they did not have
to decide between career and family life (Friedan, 1964, p. 330). To provide
some evidence, she presented several interviews she led with women "who
had suffered and solved the problem that has no name." For these interviewed
women, finding a job that encouraged them to grow and developing an
occupation outside the home "was like finding the missing piece in the puzzle
of their lives." She continued:
The money they earned often made life easier for the whole family,
but none of them pretended this was the only reason they worked, or
the main thing they got out of it. That sense of being complete and
fully a part of the world . . . had come back. They knew that it did not
come from the work alone, but from the whole – their marriage,
homes, children, work, their changing, growing links with the
community. They were once again human beings, not 'just
housewives.'" (Friedan, 1964, p. 344).
Betty Friedan did not, however, present any particular instructions on

what exactly should be done to abandon the feminine mystique
50
collectively. She only offered a few individual recommendations.

According to Chafe (1975), "this is certainly the main weakness of the
book. Its strength lies in the author's faith in women's potential and in
the depth of her analysis" (p. 17). On the other hand, perhaps such
instructions were not even necessary. Friedan insisted that once a
woman "asks herself 'What do I want to do?' she begins to find her
own answers" (Friedan, 1964, p. 326). Finally, she encouraged her
readers to follow that voice in their minds telling them they want
something more out of their lives. She assured them that they were
capable of doing great things and reminded them that "every woman
who fights the remaining barriers to full equality . . . makes it easier
for the next woman" (Friedan, 1964, p. 361).
51
BETTY FRIEDAN AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
6 Betty Friedan and the feminist

movement
6.1 Events following the publication
Immediately after the publication, The Feminine Mystique became a

bestseller, and many women began to find themselves in the book. It is,
however, important to notice that "Friedan's message of 1963 was geared to
the educated or highly educable woman like herself, capable of 'creative work'
and 'professional achievement,' who appeared to be the mystique's major
victim" (Woloch, 1994, p. 499). The problem with no name was suffered
primarily by middle-class, educated housewives who chose domesticity and
motherhood over career and then found themselves in an endless cycle of
household chores with no purpose in life.
On the contrary, as Chafe (1975) pointed out, lower-class white

women or women of color very often worked for economic reasons and,
therefore, did not desire the modification of women's social roles. Similarly,
not all housewives were necessarily desperate. Some homemakers genuinely
found fulfillment in taking care of their loved ones, and they would not choose
a different occupation even if they had the chance (pp. 200, 230-231).
Betty Friedan, therefore, received both negative and positive feedback

from her readers. The positive one, however, significantly prevailed. In her
later book called It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement,
she writes about receiving "hundreds of letters" from women who, thanks to
The Feminine Mystique, realized that they were not alone in their distress and
finally found the courage to change their lives (Friedan, 1998, pp. 22-24).
Suddenly, the problem with no name became "a problem for society as a
whole and no longer a neurosis specific to one sex" (Castro, 1990, p. 17).
52
Therefore, American middle-class housewives finally started to collectively

discover and embrace the opportunities they had not even known about
before, and they eventually initiated the new women’s movement.
6.2 National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women [NOW] was founded by Betty

Friedan and other feminists in 1966 as a response to the fact that no other
organization was willing to protect women in the question of job
discrimination. As "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 came to Congress, . . .
feminists lobbied hard for the addition of an amendment prohibiting sex
discrimination in employment. After much debate, the Act was passed with
just such a prohibition in Title VII" (NOW, 2006). In 1965, The Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC] was created to enforce The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and thus control potential discrimination in the
workplace. However, although several female members of the EEOC "fought
hard . . . to enforce Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination, . . . the EEOC
decided in September of 1965 that sex segregation in job advertising was
permissible" (NOW, 2006). Therefore, Betty Friedan, together with other
feminists, started thinking about creating an association that would focus
specifically on addressing sexual discrimination in employment. Thus, the
National Organization for Women was born.
At NOW's first National Conference, held in Washington, D.C., on

October 29, 1966, Betty Friedan was officially named president of the
association (Friedan, 1966; Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 505). At this
conference, the organizers also presented NOW's Statement of Purpose. This
statement, written by Betty Friedan, declared that NOW's primary purpose
was "to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American
53
society" and thus enforce "a fully equal partnership of the sexes" by allowing
women "to develop their fullest human potential." NOW aimed to fight
"prejudice and discrimination against women" in all areas of life, such as "in
government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the
judiciary, the labor unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion and
every other field of importance in American society" (Friedan, 1966). The
statement further addressed the situation of women in the labor force at the
time. It stated:
Although 46.4% of all American women between the ages of 18 and

65 now work outside the home, . . . 75% are in routine clerical, sales,
or factory jobs, or they are household workers, cleaning women,
hospital attendants. About two-thirds of Negro women workers are in
the lowest paid service occupations. . . . Women comprise less than
1% of federal judges; less than 4% of all lawyers; 7% of doctors. Yet
women represent 51% of the U.S. population. And, increasingly, men
are replacing women in the top positions in secondary and elementary
schools, in social work, and in libraries — once thought to be women's
fields." (Friedan, 1966).
The statement also declared that NOW would be "independent of any

political party" and that they were going to fight for the equality of sexes "in
an active, self-respecting partnership with men," making it clear that the
organization accepted members of both sexes (Friedan, 1966).
From the beginning, NOW was an organization "supported primarily

by well-educated professional women" (Chafe, 1975, p. 237) and by middle-
class housewives. However, it provided a safe space for everyone who shared
the feminist ideals, regardless of class, race, or sex (Barker-Benfield & Clin-
ton, 1998, p. 586). Friedan was generally very keen on gender cooperation
54
and emphasized in her rhetoric that if NOW achieved the changes it desired,
men would also benefit from them. As she clearly stated in the Statement of
Purpose, NOW refused "the current assumptions that a man must carry the
sole burden of supporting himself, his wife, and family" and stated that "a
true partnership between the sexes demands . . . an equitable sharing of the
responsibilities of home and children and of the economic burdens of their
support" (Friedan, 1966).
Therefore, NOW became "a formal organization with elected officers,

dues-paying members, and state branches" (Woloch, 1994, p. 516), with "a
reformist approach to equality," believing that social changes could be
brought "from within through legislation and persuasion" (Chafe, 1975,
p. 237). The organization's initial goal was to address discrimination in
employment, meaning "breaking down sex-typing of jobs; opening job
opportunities for women; fighting discrimination . . . in terms of unequal pay
for equivalent work; and encouraging women to work outside the home"
(Frieze et al., 1978, p. 155). Further goals included the creation of "a national
network of day-care centers, and retraining programs for women who had
retired from the work force to care for children" full-time (Woloch, 1994,
p. 517). At its 1967 national convention, NOW also presented the Bill of
Rights for Women, in which it promised to support the "passage of Equal
Rights Amendment (ERA), the repeal of all abortion laws, and publicly-
funded child care" (NOW, n.d.).
On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of woman suffrage, NOW

organized a nationwide demonstration called Women's Strike for Equality.
This event, held "in more than 90 cities and towns in 40 states" with 50,000
women marching on Fifth Avenue in New York, became the largest women's
demonstration since the era of the suffrage movement. (Castro, 1990, p. 25;
55
NOW, n.d.). Consequently, the organization’s membership rapidly grew from

300 members in 1966 through 1,000 in 1967 to 15,000 members in 1971
(Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 505; Woloch, 1994, p. 517).
After the Women's Strike for Equality, Friedan saw, on the one hand,
significant potential in the women's movement. She realized that more and
more women were becoming aware of their discrimination and truly wanted
to participate in the fight against it. Furthermore, an increasing number of
women of color and lower-class working women started showing interest in
the membership. On the other hand, as NOW grew bigger, there was also an
increasing risk of disagreements among the members, and Friedan saw that
"the women's movement was in serious danger of tearing itself to pieces"
(Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, p. 587). Some of the disagreements
included different political preferences, the degree of radicalism, the
opposing views on the ratification of ERA, or Friedan's opposition to the
inclusion of lesbian rights in NOW's rhetoric. Friedan eventually decided to
hand over her role as the organization's president to Aileen Hernandez in 1970
and, for some time, returned to writing (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998,
pp. 587-590).
6.3 National Association for the Repeal of Abortion

Laws
The National Association for the Repeal Abortion Laws [NARAL]

was officially founded in Chicago in 1969 by Betty Friedan and other
pro-choice advocates. The organization's main goal was to spread awareness
about the importance of abortion legalization and the subsequent political
pressure to pass a law that would make interruption accessible to all women
(Britannica, 2007).
56
In the 1960s, the right to abortion was a highly debated issue that
significantly divided American society. At that time, abortion was allowed
only if the mother's life was in danger. Moreover, "it could be obtained only
with medical certification of a life-threatening situation and with the
approval of a board of doctors" (Woloch, 1994, p. 526). Therefore, illegal
abortion was a common procedure underwent by approximately 1,000,000
women each year, around 200 of whom died as a result (Kerber & De Hart,
1991, p. 550; Woloch, 1994, p. 256).
In 1962, "the American Law Institute recommended revised abortion

laws, to cover cases of rape and incest and those where fetal deformity was
suspected, and in 1967, the American Medical Association endorsed such
proposals" (Woloch, 1994, p. 256). However, the women's movement did not
desire a reform of these laws. In the NOW's Bill of Rights, the organization
clearly stated that feminists wanted the abortion laws to be abolished
altogether (Castro, 1990, p 192). For Betty Friedan, "the right to abortion and
contraception appeared as 'a civil right of women'" that would provide them
with "the power of self-determination, that is, control of their reproductive
capacity." According to her, depriving women of this right "maintains them
in their status of sexual objects" (Castro, 1990, p. 47). Therefore, NARAL
focused primarily on lobbying and organizing demonstrations to raise
awareness of the necessity to provide American women with this fundamental
right (Britannica, 2007).
The change all pro-choice activists had been waiting for came in 1973
with the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court's decision, which made abortion a
constitutional right for all women. After this decision, the number of deaths
caused by abortion rapidly fell since legal abortion provided women with
professional medical care in case of any complications (Woloch, 1994,
57
p. 526). In 1973, just after abortion was legalized, NARAL changed its name
to the National Abortion Rights Action League "to reflect the Supreme
Court's successful striking down of restrictive abortion laws." NARAL then
maintained its function, primarily after the passage of the Hyde Amendment
in 1976, which banned the use of government funds for abortion except for
rape or incest, thus making abortion "a privilege reserved for those who could
afford it, leaving behind countless low-income women, and especially women
of color" (NARAL, 2021).
6.4 The Equal Rights Amendment
Throughout the 20th century, perhaps nothing divided the women's

movement as much as the Equal Rights Amendment [ERA]. Written by
feminist Alice Paul, the ERA was first presented in November 1923 at a
conference held in Seneca Falls, New York, on the 75th anniversary of the
1848 Woman's Rights Convention by the National Women's Party (Chafe,
1975, p. 112; ERA, n.d.; Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 359). The amendment
stated that "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United
States and every place subject to its jurisdiction" (Paul, 1923, as cited in
Chafe, 1975, p. 112) and, therefore, guaranteed "the equal application of the
Constitution to all citizens" (ERA, n.d.). The ERA was first "introduced into
Congress on December 10, 1923" (Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 359) and then
reintroduced in each subsequent session of Congress until it was passed in
March 1972. Afterward, a seven-year deadline was set for the ERA to get
ratified by at least 38 states in order for the equality of sexes to be officially
inscribed in the Constitution. (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 299).
For many feminists, the ERA seemed to be the only way to guarantee
equality of the sexes in every public area of life. They insisted that even after
58
the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women were still discriminated

against "in laws affecting divorce, possession of property, and employment
opportunity" (Chafe, 1975, pp. 112-113, 121). According to them, the central
issue was that women had "never legally been declared persons . . . by the
Supreme Court or by the Constitution" (Heide, 1972, as cited in Castro, 1990,
p. 48). When, for instance, female doctors during World War II requested to
be paid the same amount of money as the male doctors, "claiming equal
protection under the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution," they were denied this right since "the term person [in its
constitutional meaning] did not include women" (Castro, 1990, p. 8). The
ERA presented a solution to such discrimination as it "would guarantee that
women and men be treated equally under the law. . . . [and] would provide
constitutional protection against the passage and implementation of
discriminatory laws" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 299).
Therefore, the ERA supporters emphasized primarily the equality that

the amendment would bring to society for both sexes. As Frieze et al. (1978)
described, any law establishing a distinction between men's and women's
rights and obligations would be considered unconstitutional. In practice, it
would mean that any restriction previously applied to one sex (such as women
not being allowed to obtain credit) would be removed. On the contrary, any
privilege enjoyed by only one sex (such as the wife's right to alimony) would
"be extended to apply to both sexes" (p. 300). Generally, the women
supporting the ERA insisted that they were "not asking for anything but the
same opportunity [as men] to be human beings" (Pollitzer, 1931, as cited in
Chafe, 1975, p. 126). They were focused specifically on the freedom of
women as individuals and wanted to abolish all laws that restricted their
personal growth. For that reason, the ERA was supported primarily by "career
59
women who aspired to success in positions which were competitive with

men" (Chafe, 1975, p. 127).
On the other hand, the ERA opponents were mostly either housewives
with no aspirations of working outside the home or women working in
industry or factories, where the so-called "protective legislation" improved
their working conditions. These women were afraid that the passage of the
ERA "would endanger [minimal] wage and [maximum] hour laws for
women, undermine support laws for wives and children, and terminate special
penalties in the law for rape and sexual offenses against women" (Chafe,
1975, p. 123).
In reality, both arguments were reasonable in their own way. The

protective legislation provided better working conditions for more women
than it restricted. However, it also prevented them from both personal and
economic growth since the laws limited their opportunities in the majority of
more professional jobs. Thus, while the legislation protected the female
workers from substandard working conditions, it also kept them in positions
where that protection was necessary (Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998,
pp. 586-587; Kerber & De Hart, 1991, p. 362). Furthermore, as Chafe (1975)
noted, many feminists argued that "the phrase 'protective legislation' carried
the distinct connotation that women lacked the ability to care for themselves
and were second-class citizens" (p. 125). Therefore, according to them,
"women could not achieve real freedom until they were treated as individuals,
not members of a sexual group" (Chafe, 1975, p. 126).
Since the supporters and opponents of the ERA strongly disagreed

with each other, the resulting antagonism on both sides led to serious conflicts
within the movement, making it impossible to cooperate effectively. In
contrast to the suffrage movement, where "despite differences of tactics and
60
ideology, female leaders were committed to the same goal" (Chafe, 1975,
p. 112), the post-suffrage movement was much more divided. For each
woman, the definition of equality was different, which led to the division into
opposing groups. This divergence is often regarded as the biggest weakness
of the movement. As Chafe (1975) noted, "With neither a common program
nor a united leadership, there was little chance that the woman's movement
could advance or that it could generate the public support needed for progress
in the fight against discrimination" (p. 112).
As was already mentioned, the ERA passed Congress in March 1972,

after almost 50 years of effort. Afterward, it had to be ratified by at least 38
states by March 30, 1979, to become constitutional law. The first 20 states
ratified it in the first four months of its passage, and by 1975, it was approved
by 33 states. Many feminists started believing that the equality of the sexes
would finally become part of the Constitution. However, after 1975, only two
more states approved it (Castro, 1990, p. 206). When it appeared that the time
was running out, NOW even did substantial legal research and requested an
"extension of the original seven-year deadline for ratification of the ERA."
That was eventually successful, and the new date was set for June 30, 1982
(Castro, 1990, p. 211). On July 9, 1978, 100,000 demonstrators, including
Betty Friedan, attended the March for the Equal Rights Amendment in
Washington, and an estimated 60 percent of the public was in the support of
the amendment (Castro, 1990, pp. 65, 206). However, the opposition to the
ERA, primarily from Southern states, was too strong. Even the extended
deadline did not help to get the necessary 38 ratifications, and the ERA
eventually failed to pass by just three ratifications (Castro, 1990, p. 206).
61
6.5 Accomplishments of the women’s movement
Despite the ERA not being ratified, the activities of the feminist
movement led to several social changes in the second half of the 20th century.
As Frieze et al. (1978) noted, "by the early 1970s the messages of the women's
liberation movement had reached most people in this country" (p. 155).
Several organizations were dedicating their time to addressing crucial sexual
inequalities, and it seemed that women were finally beginning to wake up and
fight for the freedom that had been denied to them for the majority of
American history.
In 1974, the percentage of women between 20 and 24 years of age

who were married declined to 54.4 percent from previous 67.2 percent in
1960 (p. 141). Also, "by 1970, 50 percent of the married women between the
ages of forty-five and fifty-four were working, in comparison to 41 percent
in 1960 and 29 percent in 1952" (Frieze et al., 1978, p. 151).
Therefore, women were not only postponing marriage and

motherhood but were also participating in the workforce more often.
Furthermore, despite many women still working for financial reasons, more
and more women started entering the workforce for the motivations of
personal growth and increased marital happiness (Frieze et al., 1978, pp. 177-
178).
62
CRITICISM OF BETTY FRIEDAN
7 Criticism of Betty Friedan
It is important to notice that Betty Friedan was certainly not adored by

all her readers. Not only did many housewives, who were happy with their
domestic life, disagree with her, but she also faced harsh criticism for various
other reasons. On the one hand, writing The Feminine Mystique allowed her
to become one of the women's movement leaders who helped to change the
societal perception of female roles. On the other hand, it also led to her
becoming "an extremely discussed and criticized figure within the new
Radical Feminist Reflection" (Topini, 2014, p. 1).
One of the reasons for this criticism was her attitude towards
homosexuality. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan claims that male
homosexuality is caused by the housewife's excessive attachment to her son,
who, as a result, never grows up and therefore ends up being immature,
irresponsible, promiscuous, and unable to make serious commitments.
According to her, "the homosexuality that is spreading like a murky smog
over the American scene" was just another symptom of the feminine
mystique, something that was wrong and could be eliminated by abandoning
the mystique (Friedan, 1964, pp. 264-265). Furthermore, in a chapter called
The Passionate Journey, Friedan describes how some feminists involved in
the suffrage movement "denied their own sex, the desire to love and be loved
by a man" and became "man-hating, embittered, sex-starved spinsters"
(Friedan, 1964, p. 74). She also strongly opposed the idea that the question of
lesbianism should be included in the priorities of NOW, which was criticized
primarily by radical feminists and led to arguments within the movement
(Barker-Benfield & Clinton, 1998, pp. 587).
63
Another criticized aspect of Friedan's book was its relatively narrow

focus. The Feminine Mystique is targeted exclusively at white, middle-class,
well-educated suburban housewives, whereas other women, primarily lower-
class and women of color, seem to be ignored. As Rotskoff (2000) pointed
out, millions of these women worked out of economic necessity, "often
struggling to improve working conditions on the job." Furthermore, in
contrast to Friedan's description of women's passivity and immaturity, many
women participated "in civic reform movements, trade unions, the peace
movement, and the civil rights movement during the 1950s" (p. 121). The
omission of these women from the context of sexual discrimination was
perceived as incredibly classist and racist, mainly by women of color, who
were the victims of double discrimination, and by radical feminists (Topini,
2014, p. 5).
However, perhaps the most discussed issue since the late 1990s has
been the incomplete background Friedan presented to her readers in The
Feminine Mystique. In the book, Friedan describes herself as an educated
mother of three who decided to refuse the university grant and instead become
a suburban housewife, only later realizing that she became a victim of the
feminine mystique (Friedan, 1964, pp. 62-63). Friedan also claimed "that she
awakened to political consciousness out of disillusionment with her role as a
suburban housewife" during the 1950s, and she almost never mentioned
working for the labor union newspaper (Rotskoff, 2000, p. 122).
Nevertheless, in 1998, historian Daniel Horowitz published a book called
Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left,
The Cold War, and Modern Feminism, in which he uncovers the parts of
Friedan's past that she omitted while telling her story. In his book, Horowitz
presents his belief that "Friedan's feminism had much deeper roots," and that
64
her political consciousness of sexual discrimination appeared much earlier

than she admitted (Topini, 2014, p. 3).
First of all, Friedan's biography written by Horowitz demonstrates the

degree to which her opinions were influenced by her Smith College
professors between 1938 and 1942. In one of his articles, Horowitz (1996)
pointed out that "Friedan took an economics course taught by Dorothy W.
Douglas, . . . well known at the time for her radicalism. In what she wrote for
Douglas, . . . Friedan sympathetically responded to the Marxist critique of
capitalism as a cultural, economic, and political force" (p. 9). Topini (2014)
extended Horowitz's idea in a paper comparing his book to Friedan's
autobiography, claiming that Friedan developed during her studies at Smith a
"radical social vision and a feminist sensibility, turning from a provincial
outsider into an advocate of trade unions, labor movement, and Marxist
theory; particularly attentive to the racial and wage discriminations among
working class women" (p. 3). Friedan later admitted that she truly had been
in a group of "college liberals trying hard to become radicals, with romantic
visions of communism" (Friedan, 2006, p. 57). In her book Life So Far: A
Memoir, she describes how the "sense of being part of something, a group, a
community, which has always meant so much to me since the isolation in
Peoria, was, I think, what drew me to the ideals of communism in the first
place" (Friedan, 2006, p. 62).
Another subject of Horowitz's criticism was the fact that Friedan

omitted from her story the nine years during which she was writing for labor
union newspapers. After rejecting the second grant in 1942, Friedan worked
from 1943 to 1946 as a journalist at "the Federated Press, a left-wing news
service," where she composed articles supporting "the aspirations of African
Americans and union members" (Horowitz, 1996, p. 11). After being fired in
65
1946, she started working for the UE News, "the official publication of the
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, one of the most
radical unions of the 40s" (Topini, 2014, p. 3). Working for another seven
years in the UE News, Friedan "became part of the Popular Front – a broad,
radical social democratic movement forged around issues such as anti-
fascism, anti-racism, civil liberties, and industrial unionism, . . . a movement
that fought for social justice for all women, especially working-class and
African-American" (Rotskoff, 2000, p. 123). Thus, according to this
statement, Friedan was well aware of the inequality of sexes long before she
wrote The Feminine Mystique. Also, as claimed by Horowitz (1996), she
became even so interested in it that she "participated in discussions on
women's issues, including the issue of corporations' systematic discrimination
against women" (p. 14). Then, in 1952, she also composed "a pamphlet, UE
Fights for Women Workers, . . . a remarkable manual for fighting wage
discrimination" (Horowitz, 1996, p. 1). This pamphlet was actually the last
thing Friedan wrote under the name "Betty Goldstein," although she had been
married since 1947. In fact, she didn't start writing under the name "Betty
Friedan" until 1955, when she began writing articles and stories for popular
women's magazines. (Horowitz, 1996, p. 18).
Rotskoff (2000) argues that since Friedan went through so many

diverse life experiences, it is impossible that The Feminine Mystique emerged
"wholly from the frustrations of a bored PTA volunteer" (p. 125). However,
it is not entirely clear why Betty Friedan decided to omit all this information
from her book, and thus it cannot be said what exactly led her to publish it in
the first place. Nevertheless, there are several possible reasons for her
decision. The first reason, according to Horowitz, is entirely political. He
stated that "in the mid-1950s, Friedan may have undergone some
deradicalization" (p. 23) and therefore only protected herself from being
66
associated with her communist and radical past (Topini, 2014, p. 3). The
second possible reason is that by omitting her past and focusing exclusively
on her domestic experience, she was "using a writer's technique of personal
reference to form an identity with the readers" (Epstein, 2000, p. 408).
Horowitz (1996) expands this idea and states that after participating in leftist
social movements and realizing that they did not give enough attention to the
issue of sex discrimination, Friedan might have tried, "whether consciously
or not . . . to mobilize middle-class readers," and thus create a liberal feminist
movement, since "the persona of the suburban housewife enabled her to talk
about alienation and discrimination in a new setting and in less radical terms"
(pp. 17, 29). On the other hand, Friedan (2006) later wrote in Life So Far:
A Memoir that "I never set out to start a women's revolution. I never planned
it. It just happened, I would say, by some miracle of convergence of my life
and history, . . . one thing leading to another" (p. 13). Therefore, despite not
being able to tell what exactly Friedan's initial intentions were, it is important
to st least notice all the aspects of her past in order to understand how complex
the origins of the second wave of feminism actually were.
67
CONCLUSION
8 Conclusion
During the 1950s and early 1960s, American society confronted white
middle-class women with numerous ideas of who they should be and what
they should do. The ideal of the happy suburban homemaker was promoted
by women's magazines, advertisers, psychoanalysts, and even the educational
system. If a woman wanted to choose a serious occupation outside the home
above marriage and motherhood, she was often considered unfeminine. The
so-called "career women" usually had to face uncomfortable judgment,
prejudice, and underestimation of their abilities, and even ambitious young
girls were being advised not to get too interested in school. Therefore, many
women tried to mold themselves into this image of "an ideal woman," not
realizing that they were losing their own unique identity in the process. As a
result, the unhappiness of suburban housewives soon spread across the United
States and eventually became what Friedan called "the problem that has no
name."
In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan chose a journalistic approach, and

through interviews with young female students, unemployed middle-class
mothers, educators, marketing managers, psychologists, and editors of
women's magazines, she constructed a comprehensible interpretation of why
American homemakers suffered from such frustration and feelings of
emptiness. She connected her discoveries to her own experience of domestic
life in the suburbs and thus provided her readers with the sense that they were
not alone.
Despite the harsh criticism that Friedan consequently faced, she was
able to found several organizations that advocated for women's rights, and
she eventually led the feminist movement into a period of social changes.
68
CONCLUSION
In the last years of her life, Friedan also faced accusations of her
earlier sympathies with radical communists, which she had previously hidden
from the public sphere. Regardless of the reason for her decision, this period
of her life also played a part in shaping Friedan's personality and knowledge,
which she ultimately used to compose The Feminine Mystique and later lead
the women's movement.
Friedan was undoubtedly a controversial person who, like everyone

else, made several mistakes along the way. She was, however, absolutely
crucial for the development of second-wave liberal feminism and helped to
pave the path to an easier and more equal future for American women.
69
LIST OF REFERENCES
List of References
Barker-Benfield, G. J., & Clinton, C. (1998). Portraits of American women:

From settlement to the present. Oxford Univ. Press.
Bowlby, R. (1987). “The Problem with No Name“: Rereading Friedan's

"The Feminine Mystique". Feminist Review, (27), 61.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1394811
Burgum, M. (1947). [Review of Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, by F.

Lundberg & M. F. Farnham]. Science & Society, 11(4), 382–388.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40399863
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2007, December 12). NARAL Pro-

Choice America. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britan-
nica.com/topic/NARAL-Pro-Choice-America
Castro, G., & Loverde-Bagwell. (1990). American Feminism: A Contempo-

rary History. New York University Press.
Chafe, W. H. (1975). The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Eco-

nomic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970. Oxford University Press.
Epstein, C. F. (2000). [Review of Betty Friedan and the Making of the Fem-
inine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, and Modern Femi-
nism, by D. Horowitz]. Contemporary Sociology, 29(2), 407–408.
https://doi.org/10.2307/2654442
The Equal Rights Amendment. Equal Rights Amendment. (n.d.). Retrieved

April 10, 2022, from https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/the-
equal-rights-amendment
Founding. National Organization for Women. (2006, July). Retrieved April

5, 2022, from https://now.org/about/history/founding-2/
Friedan, B. (1964). The Feminine Mystique. DELL PUBL. CO.
Friedan, B. (1966). Statement Of Purpose. National Organization for

Women. Retrieved February 2, 2022, from https://now.org/about/his-
tory/statement-of-purpose/
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LIST OF REFERENCES
Friedan, B. (1998). It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Move-

ment. Harvard University Press.
Friedan, B. (2006). Life So Far: A Memoir. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
Frieze, I. H., Zellman, G. L., Ruble, D. N., Johnson, P. B., & Parsons, J. E.
(1978). Women and Sex Roles: A Social Psychological Perspective.
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ganda during World War II: Class Differences in the Portrayal of
War Work. Signs, 8(4), 672.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173689
Horowitz, D. (1996). Rethinking Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique:

Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America. Ameri-
can Quarterly, 48(1), 1–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041520
Kerber, L. K., & De Hart, J. S. (1991). Women's America: Refocusing the

Past. Oxford University Press.
Mendes, K. (2011). Feminism in the news: Representations of the women's

movement since the 1960s. Palgrave Macmillan.
Orleck, A. (2014). Rethinking American Women's Activism. ResearchGate.

Taylor & Francis. Retrieved March 19, 2022, from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308516586_Rethink-
ing_American_Women's_Activism.
Rotskoff, L. E. (2000). Home-grown Radical or Home-bound Housewife?

Rethinking the Origins of 1960s Feminism through the Life and Work
of Betty Friedan. Reviews in American History, 28(1), 120–127.
https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2000.0014
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Feminist Political Debate. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from
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72

BACHELOR THESIS Betty Friedan and The Problem That Had No Name - Karolina Ohlidalova

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BACHELOR THESIS Betty Friedan and The Problem That Had No Name - Karolina Ohlidalova

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MASARYK UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Betty Friedan and the Problem That

Supervisor: Michael George, M.A.

Autor: Karolína Ohlídalová

Author: Karolína Ohlídalová

the feminine mystique; feminism; women’s rights movement; American

V padesátých a na počátku šedesátých let 20. století přerostla rozšířená a často

“I hereby declare that I worked on my thesis independently, using only the

Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím

Brno April 20, 2022 .......................................

2 Feminism before The Feminine Mystique 13

3 Women in the post-war American society 20

4 Betty Friedan and the making of The Feminine Mystique 28

5 The Feminine Mystique 36

6 Betty Friedan and the feminist movement 52

7 Criticism of Betty Friedan 63

The question of equality has been challenged repeatedly in the United

Nevertheless, society soon began to notice that something was not

This thesis looks back at the beginnings of American feminism,

2 Feminism before The Feminine Mystique

It is truly complicated, if not impossible, to delineate the exact beginning

During the 1840s, many people, including women, were members of

Independence proved to be successful. At the end of the convention, "sixty-

Although the Seneca Falls Convention addressed many issues, including

However, as Orleck (2014) noted, after Congress passed the Fourteenth

When in 1869, the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made it

3 Women in the post-war American society

3.1 Women in the labor force

Participation of women in the labor force noticeably changed after the

Furthermore, as the war progressed, it started to appear that society's

Later, however, the postwar economic situation once again encouraged

risen to 31 percent" (Woloch, 1994, p. 470). By 1960, "some 40 percent of

3.2 Baby boom and early marriage

Another significant element of the postwar era was the return of

of the changing world, women as well as men sought the comforting

Moreover, thanks to the postwar economic expansion, many men

3.3 The ideal of a housewife heroine

The "Occupation: Housewife," as Betty Friedan calls it in The

As a result of the ideal of a happy domestic wife and zero expectations

4 Betty Friedan and the making of The

4.1 Betty Friedan’s life, studies, and career

Friedan's childhood was, on the one hand, quite privileged as her

pointed out, "my own feminism somehow began in my mother's discontent"

Another thing that influenced Friedan's childhood were the tensions

and, eventually, as editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper," which helped

In 1942, Friedan "graduated summa cum laude" in psychology and

4.2 Writing The Feminine Mystique

In 1956, as her third child – a daughter called Emily – was born,

Of the 200 women who answered that questionnaire in 1957, 89 per

widespread unsatisfaction of the American housewives in more detail. After

As Friedan later states in her book It Changed My Life: Writings on

5 The Feminine Mystique

5.1 Introduction to the feminine mystique and the

Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique comprises fourteen chapters,

The Feminine Mystique opens with a chapter dedicated to "the

that time, shared by many middle-class women. Because of societal pressure,

5.2 Women’s magazines and advertisement

In the second chapter called The Happy Housewife Heroine, Betty

This sudden change in the content of women's magazines and the

Another significant contributor to the image of a cheerful homemaker

more household appliances by offering them "specialized products for

5.3 Sigmund Freud and the theory of "penis envy"