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Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique

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Friedan’s Chapter One and Two Karly Marin Sacramento State University Communication Studies Major Gender Ideology Introduction Women play a pivotal role in the growth and development of social, economic and political spheres. There are countable women in the history of the world who have made remarkable contributions to the various spheres. Their accounts are recorded in books, magazines and journals amongst others. The Feminine Mystique is one of the books that received a wide audience in the 1950s. Written by Betty Friedan, the book is highly associated with the revolutions that led to the women liberation movements. The chapter on the “Problem that has No Name,” explains the dilemma of women and the challenges they faced …show more content…

In addition, they formed the majority of the suburban housewives who were doing far much better compared to the working-class women of color. In her work, Friedan discriminates African-American women to a large extent even in the light that many of them formed the category of working-class women. She actually, entirely underscores their contributions to the economy at the time. The reason why she left them out of the book could be because they never participated in the roles that she deemed “fulfilling” or those that she advocated. While Friedan generalizes the idea that all women were struggling to achieve equality with men at the time, she fails to understand that there were others who were not under the broad “category of Feminine Mystique.” In fact, many African-American women and working class women did not share the perception that Friedan had. Majority of them did not view their families as a limiting factor towards political involvement and incompatibility with …show more content…

She believed that gay men were disrespectful and that they could not be respected in the society (Nardi & Schneider, 2013). At a particular instance, she described the spread of homosexuality in the United States as “murky smog”. Still in the research, the mistrust for gay people was drawn from unscientific ideas and methods of collecting data. For instance, the information that Alfred Kinsey, an author whose views concerning homosexuality are widely used in Friedan’s book, was collected from a prison facility. The fact that the facility had more men than women means that random sampling was not employed in collecting research (Nardi & Schneider,

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According to Betty Friedan, women were considered as domestic caregivers with sole responsibility for home, children, and the worship of God, while men ‘brought home the bacon.’ Because women were caught up in their attempts to live a life of “true feminine fulfillment,” to American politician, Shirley Chisholm, there was this “unspoken assumption” that “[women] do not have executive ability, orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and they are too emotional.” It is this tenacious stereotype of Western women to constantly emulate a feminine identity which marks the beginnings of Marie’s adolescence and her attempt at striving for an image representative of purity, morality, and the Nokomis figure by joining the convent. Although her decision to go up “on the hill with the black robe women” and to become a nun was more based on the desire to be worshipped and treated “as a saint,” as giving herself up to pledge her pureness for God under certain vows is the ultimate expression of purity. Marie figures that by “going up there to pray as good as [the nuns] could,” she would be able to erase the “pure and wideness of [her] ignorance,” her image as the “dirty Lazarre,” and

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What was the historical significance of Betty Friedan to the evolution of women’s rights in America in the 1960s? Women have always fought hard for their equality. Since the very first convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, countless women have joined together to try and improve the standard of life for all women within the United States. In the later years of the 19th century, women gathered behind activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with the hope of achieving voting rights of women under the Constitution. On August 26th, 1920, their goal was achieved with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

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It is often said that a new definition of a woman arose in the 1920s. But is that true? While most women experienced many newfound freedoms in the 1920s, black women could not explore these freedoms as easily as white women. In the novel Passing by Nella Larsen, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry grew up in Chicago together and are now both two wives and mothers in New York City during the 1920s, but there is a big difference between them. The novel’s title refers to light-skinned black women masquerading as white women for social benefits.

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After WWII, women were expected to go back to their traditional roles In reality, many women took jobs outside the home to help pay bills and make a living. Economic boom = more workers Women were paid lower and limited to jobs such as teachers, nurses or secretary In 1962, Betty Friedan 's book The Feminine Mystique captured the frustration and despair of a generation of college-educated housewives who felt trapped and unfulfilled. While Friedan 's writing largely spoke to an audience of educated women, her work had sparked the "second wave" of the feminist movement.

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Women and minorities were mistreated and segregated by the "higher" gathering of individuals, the white man. At the beginning of the 1800s, women were viewed as housewives only, their whole pursue in life was to “get married, have children, and serve their husbands” (Women's Rights Before the Civil War). They were “second-class citizens, encourage not to pursue

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In her essay, “The Importance of Work,” from The Feminine Mystique published in 1963, Betty Friedan confronts American women’s search for identity. Throughout the novel, Betty Friedan breaks new ground, concocting the idea that women can discover personal fulfillment by straying away from their original roles. Friedan ponders on the idea that The Feminine Mystique is the cause for a vast majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house; therefore, restricting them from discovering who they are as women. Friedan’s novel is well known for creating a different kind of feminism and rousing various women across the nation.

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The excerpt I chose to reflect on is called “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” by Claudia Jones (1949). Jones express the concerns that women of color in her time suffer from the neglect and degradation they receive throughout their lives. During this time, the reason many African American women go through the struggles in their community originated from the notion that the “bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman” (108). In my opinion, they have every right to be afraid of African American women. As Jones stated nicely "once Negro women undertake action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced" (108).

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Her tragedy reflects not only the sexism in the African American families in early 20th century, but also the uselessness

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The search of identity is an issue familiar to contemporary society as well as to the society of 1963 when Betty Friedan published her feminist manifesto The Feminine Mystique. The main idea of Friedan 's article, "The Importance of Work," is the question of how individuals can recognize their full capacities and achieve identity. She argues that human identity is meaningful purposeful work, and individuals are not identified as women or men, just human based upon their work. Friedan believes work is what an individual does in his or her life; for example, snowboarding, songwriting, hockey, football etc. Friedan was an author, an activist, and the first president of the National Organization for Women.

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I 'm surprised that as much work that is put into the family inside and outside of the home, women still were not seen as good enough. " 'In fact sometimes as soon as I would get home, he would go out... to hang out with his friends and, I found out later, he had other women" ' (Collins 27). It actually broke my heart to read about this sentence. The woman, Gloria Vaz, was an African-American mother with four children, lived in Brooklyn and yeah from nine to five.

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The two main subjects of Annie Dillard’s “An American Childhood” are the author’s coming to terms with the intersection of race and opportunity, and her disappointment with fictional literature. 10-year-old Annie Dillard understands how gender and racial stereotypes play a huge role in her 5th-grade world. “I nevertheless imagined, perhaps from the authority and freedom of it, that its author was a man.” During the 1950s, males had more authority in their everyday life compared to women. For example, they are given power over women, they had better jobs than women and men and typically the men have a better education for more of them went to college.

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Betty Friedan’s article on this topic proved to be successful because acknowledging the diversity among women is a suitable feminist strategy as far as enhancing their visibility is concerned. Though many argue the feminist movement was born out of a united front among women, Betty is the one who created that united front. Having shed light on such a taboo subject, Betty created the second-wave feminism movement because of her audacity to speak up and speak out when no one else would. Betty recognized her power as a woman and her obligation to speak on the subject, “I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological

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In her 1975 article, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” Jane Abray provides a dismissive view of women’s movements during the Revolution. In the article, Abray emphasizes the failures of revolutionary feminism. In her opinion, the most compelling reason for revolutionary feminism’s failure was that it was a minority interest that remained inaccessible to the majority of French women who accepted their inferior status to men. Abray suggests additional reasons for the movement’s “abject failure,” including its inability to garner support from the male leaders of the Revolution, the disreputable characters of the feminist leaders, the strategic errors made by the movement’s leaders, and a “spirit of the times” that emphasized the nuclear family

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The Feminine Mystique (1963) examines the dehumanizing conditions of middle class American women who were excluded from social and political life to be anchored in their wifely and motherly roles. The book marks the Second Wave of American feminism. Friedan writes, “Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers” (61). This meant that the whole of an American woman’s life was meant to attract and keep her husband and serve his and children’s needs. She deals with this painful ordeal of women and clearly brings out the ennui, unhappiness, and the lack of companionship experienced by women in their marriages.

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In the Feminine Mystique, Friedan proves the existence of a feminine mystique in American society and its deleterious effects on American society. She does this by showing society’s portrayal and expectations of women, the impact on American women by the works of

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