Many People thought that the need for a women’s rights movement in the United Sates ended with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But women still faced many hurdles in the quest for equal rights and even lost ground in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. Then, beginning in the 1960’s, new generations of leaders arose to push for equal right in educational and employment opportunities and to seek more influence in national and international politics.

Betty Friedan was born in Peoria, Illinois, on February 4, 1921, one year after women won the right to vote, Friedan began writing for her school newspaper in junior high. She continued to write in high school, where she revealed her enterprising nature when she started a new campus magazine with a male classmate. Friedan graduated from high school at age seventeen and was accepted to Smith College in Massachusetts. Friedan graduated with honors in 1942, earning a degree in psychology. After completing one year of graduate study at Berkeley, she was offered a scholarship to get her Ph.D. degree. Friedan turned down the scholarship for fear of becoming a spinster. Friedan moved to New York in 1944 to work as a reporter on a workers’ newspaper. She continued to report for the workers’ press until 1949, when Friedan was fired after asking for her second maternity leave. Friedan responded by leaving her career to become a full time wife and mother. The family soon moved to the suburbs, where a third child was born. Her life as a homemaker led Friedan to develop a theory on women. It concerned the dangers of what she saw as a myth, the idea that women should be completely satisfied with their roles as wives and mothers and that somehow it was abnormal to want a career or an identity separate from the family. Friedan developed her idea in 1956 while studying the results of a reunion questionnaire she had distributed to her college classmates. Friedan found, as she wrote later, “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform” (Friedan, 11). This theory resulted in “The Feminine Mystique” a book that shot straight to its target, middle class wives like Friedan herself. In 1966 she helped found the National Organization for Women, and today she’s justly hailed as a feminist foremother.

Friedan felt that advertisers among others had pulled women into the home and placed ideological images of who they were supposed to be. Friedan defined this image by saying women could “find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love. It denied women careers or any commitment outside the home and narrowed woman’s world down to the home, cut her role back to housewife” (Meyerowitz, 1). Friedan felt that it was writers and editors of mass circulation magazines, especially women’s magazines who created this horrible image. Friedan argued that American women, especially women living in the suburbs, suffered from deep discontent. This full time domesticity denied women a chance for growth. Men and women find personal identity through individual achievement, especially careers. Friedan felt strongly that without such growth woman would remain unfulfilled and unhappy (Meyerowitz, 2).

Joanne Meyerowitz, found that in contrast to the “happy housewife heroine” that Friedan found in magazines there was just as much magazine coverage that supported women’s wage work and advocated greater participation in politics. To enhance her point Meyerowitz talks about two opinion polls that were conducted in Woman’s Home Companion in both 1947 and 1949. The polls asked readers to name the women they admired most. In both years the top four women were Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Sister Elizabeth Kenny (who worked with polio victims), and Clare Boothe Luce (an author and congresswoman). All of these women clearly did not fit the image of the domestic housewife. Respondents of the poll said that their reasons for choosing these women were the fact that they showed “courage, spirit, and conviction,” “devotion to the public good,” and “success in overcoming obstacles.” It is interesting that these women were admired when the average woman was told she could be successful and victorious only if she was doing domestic work correctly.

Friedan’s steadfast claim that “The Feminine Mystique” was born of and average housewife’s suburban discontent is key to the book’s popularity. Not seeing it clearly for a while, Friedan claims she gradually realized that something was wrong with the way American women were living their lives. “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform…” Friedan admits to sensing the problem as a suburban housewife, not as a reporter for she was raising her own children at the time.

Friedan’s portrayal of herself as so totally trapped by the feminine mystique was part of a reinvention of herself as she wrote and promoted “The Feminine Mystique.” Horowitz argues in response to Friedan’s claims of having experienced an epiphany in the suburbs. Not a typical housewife, Friedan had a radical past whose theoretical underpinnings served her well in the articulation of a new women’s agenda. “During much of the two decades beginning in 1943, Friedan was participation in left-wing activity, writing articles that ran counter to Cold War ideology, and living in a cosmopolitan, racially integrated community. Not many 1950s suburban housewives read Engels’s argument for the liberation of women…” This era includes Friedan’s work as a writer for the official publication of a radical union already waging the fight for social justice for African American and women workers. “This Activism disproves her later claims that she was unattuned to women’s issues before bemoaning the stifled suburban housewife” (Horowitz, 145). Horowitz has clearly contributed a valuable perspective to the record of ideological, social, and political influences largely responsible for women’s status in the twentieth century American society.

The issues raised by Friedan still strike at the core of the challenges women face at home and in the workplace. As women continue to struggle for equality, to keep their hard won gains, and to find fulfillment in careers, marriage, and family, “The Feminine Mystique” remains a controversial book. There have been many changes in women’s empowerment since Friedan wrote “The Feminine Mystique.” Behind the celebration of the American woman’s victory Friedan warns women of a new problem that has no name. According to Faludi, it appears American culture prefers women as “… non-intellectual, homemakers and mothers” This mentality is not easily resolved, because it is introduced at a young age. It is men who have to break through to a new way of thinking about themselves and society.

The beliefs and assumptions of Friedan about the way women should live their lives remain strong. According to Crittenden, women have absorbed the lesson that they should forgo or postpone marriage and children in order to forge careers. “So many of us imbibed these ideas and plotted our lives according to them…”Women must reject the ideas of Friedan if they are to begin to solve the problem women face today. Although women are freer to hold positions of power in the workplace, Crittenden suggests it has come at the expense of power over our personal lives.

Betty Friedan was born in Peoria, Illinois, on February 4, 1921, one year after women won the right to vote, Friedan began writing for her school newspaper in junior high. Friedan graduated with honors in 1942, earning a degree in psychology. Friedan found, as she wrote later, “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform”. Friedan defined this image by saying women could “find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love. It denied women careers or any commitment outside the home and narrowed woman’s world down to the home, cut her role back to housewife.” Friedan felt that it was writers and editors of mass circulation magazines, especially women’s magazines who created this horrible image. Friedan argued that American women, especially women living in the suburbs, suffered from deep discontent. This full time domesticity denied women a chance for growth. Men and women find personal identity through individual achievement, especially careers. Friedan felt strongly that without such growth woman would remain unfulfilled and unhappy.

The polls asked readers to name the women they admired most. Not many 1950s suburban housewives read Engels’s argument for the liberation of women…” The issues raised by Friedan still strike at the core of the challenges women face at home and in the workplace. There have been many changes in women’s empowerment since Friedan wrote “The Feminine Mystique.” Behind the celebration of the American woman’s victory Friedan warns women of a new problem that has no name. The beliefs and assumptions of Friedan about the way women should live their lives remain strong. Women must reject the ideas of Friedan if they are to begin to solve the problem women face today.

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