Betty Friedan: The One Who Changed Women’s History

By

Fanni Enyedi

University of Debrecen

Institutes of English and American Studies

Supervisor: Éva Mathey

Debrecen, Hungary

2020

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NON PLAGIARISM DECLARATION

I, the undersigned Fanni Enyedi, as a student of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of

Debrecen, hereby declare under penalty of perjury, and also certify with my signature below,

that my thesis, titled Betty Friedan: The One Who Changed Women’s History is my own

work, except where indicated by the reference to the printed and electronic sources used

according to the internationally accepted rules and regulations on intellectual property rights.

I am aware of and understand what plagiarism entails with reference to university theses,

including:

• verbatim direct quotations without the use of quotation marks and proper acknowledgment

of sources;

• close paraphrases or summaries of sources without due referencing;

• attempts to present the published words and ideas of other authors as my own.

I hereby declare that I am aware of what constitutes an act of plagiarism and understand that

my thesis will be rejected if found to contain any instance of plagiarism.

Furthermore, I hereby confirm that the text of my thesis, uploaded to the Electronic Archives

of the University of Debrecen (DEA), available at the address of

http://dea.lib.unideb.hu/dea/handle/2437/85081, is exactly the same as the text submitted by

myself in a hard copy and/or on a compact disc.

Dated in Debrecen on 26, April, 2020

Fanni Enyedi

signature

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Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 4

1. Chapter One: The Beginning of Sisterhood ................................................................. 5

1.1.The Housewife of the 1950s ......................................................................................... 6

2. Chapter Two: Betty Friedan As a Feminist ............................................................... 10

2.1.The Problem ................................................................................................................ 13

2.2.The Feminine Mystique (1963) ................................................................................... 17

3. Chapter Three: The Women’s Movement ................................................................. 23

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 25

Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 26

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Introduction

“We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth,

all the maps change. There are new mountains.” (160) says Ursula K. LeGuin in Dancing at the

Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (1989). This quote is the best to

describe women’s history and the battle which women had to undertake during their fight for

equality. It shows that if women support each other they are strong and undefeatable.

The purpose of my thesis is to shed more light on the history of American women

following World War II, and study and understand the problem which housewives had to face

in the 1950s, based on Betty Friedan’s seminal book, The Feminine Mystique (1963). First of

all, the history of first wave of feminism will be discussed in a brief overview, then I will deal

with the American housewife of the 1950s. Secondly, Betty Friedan’s feminist activities and

advocacy as president of the movement will be in the focus, with special emphasis on her book

which changed thousands of women’s lives.

For centuries, women were seen as housewives who had to stay at home raising their

children without having any goals in their lives. They were not supposed to pursue a career,

however they could not always gain fulfillment from doing the household chores. In the 1950s

unhappiness and dissatisfaction became widespread among American housewives, but none of

them dared to publicly discuss the misery which they experienced. Betty Friedan, a journalist

who was also a housewife understood the problem that many women of her generation

experienced. Her research and survey interviewing housewives provided the basis of her book,

The Feminine Mystique which was published in 1963. With its immediate success Friedan was

ready to participate actively in the movement to help women. In 1966 she became one of the

founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Their aim was to defeat sex

discrimination in society, for example in employment. With Betty Friedan’s leadership the

women’s movement could gain momentum in the 1960s.

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1. Chapter One: The Beginning of Sisterhood

Until the middle of the 19th century women were considered second-class citizens who were

supposed to live up to the traditional social expectations and stay at home, take care of their

children, do the household chores and act according to their husband’s wishes. Most women

were inferior to men as they did lack political as well as educational rights. Women had had

enough of the separate spheres and discrimination against them and this was the time when

feminism started to rise.

One of the turning points in women’s history was the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848

when the first wave of feminism began. This was the first time when “women have drowned

upon the metaphor of sisterhood to express the quality of their relations with one another and

to endure and resist oppression” (Fox-Genovese 12). The beginning of a long fight to equality

started with some of the pioneers including Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan

Brownell Anthony and Lucretia Mott, but this process had some results only in 1920, with the

passage of the 19th amendment which definitely signified the fact that women could enjoy a

greater degree of freedom and independence. In the 1920s besides the politically- and socially

minded activist woman the appearance of the flappers also signified women’s emancipation.

The flapper was a new kind of woman, the provocative female figure, who went against the

social norms wearing short hair and stylish clothes, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and

going to parties instead of staying home all day long, who in most cases did not get married or

had children.

During World War II women had to undertake masculine jobs because most men were

fighting in the war. Previously they had to engage in typical female jobs such as nursing and

teaching but now they had a chance to show that they were capable of pursuing a successful

career in fields other than the typical female occupations. It must have been difficult for them

to juggle between the different roles they had, being a mother, a housewife and a working

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woman at the same time. Although women’s economic and social emancipation during the war

seemed in some regard a breakthrough, and there was a chance to reach equality between men

and women in the labor market, after the war ended, discrimination against women was still a

problem. They earned less than men did and in case of a recession, women were the ones to get

fired first.

After the war ended women had to return to their homes and they could not enjoy the

benefits of their fundamental rights such as education or work. The underlying social

expectations toward women and thus the image of the ideal American woman had changed in

the wake of the world war. Most of them had to give up their careers or their studies so that

they could focus on their family in their early 20s. They were expected to be happy and satisfied

with their lives because they achieved what they were dreaming of as little girls, being married

to a successful and handsome husband, whom she had children with, living in a beautiful, big

house. But for many, it turned out, something was missing. After taking her children to school

and finishing her daily chores a woman did not have the chance to discuss her feeling and

problems with anybody. Most women felt helpless and miserable with their lives, but they could

not give a name to this specific problem. Betty Friedan, one of the leading feminists in the

1960s made a survey among approximately 200 women to get to know more about the problem

which seemed to affect many housewives’ lives. Friedan wrote her landmark book, The

Feminine Mystique in 1963 in which she analyzed in further details the problem so many

women seemed to have experienced.

1.1.The Housewife of the 1950s

When I think of an American housewife in the 1950s, I see a beautiful young lady

embodying the image of the perfect American housewife, who is standing at the door of her

nice and clean house and she is waving goodbye to her husband who is leaving for work. She

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is wearing an apron because she is probably in the kitchen all day long cooking and cleaning to

make the love of her life happy when he arrives home after a tiring day. Her hair and makeup

are impeccable, and she is wearing pearls around her neck. She is “healthy, beautiful, educated,

concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine

fulfillment” (Friedan 13). She should be glad that she does not have to care about the problems

of the world. On the surface her life seemed to be perfect but inside, something was wrong,

something was missing. Whenever they were alone, they kept questioning themselves, “Is this

all”? (Friedan 11)

Housewives in the 1950s and 1960s had many tasks to do in their homes. Most people

thought that women were home all day long and they did not have to worry about anything but

being a housewife meant a full-time working position. New kinds of electrical devices made

women’s life easier. The new gadgets such as vacuum cleaners, steam irons, or automatic dryers

became available in more and more households but still women were struggling with the chores

they had. Gail Collins in When Everything Changed (2009) claims, that, although housewives

got more help through these technical developments, they worked about 50 hours a week which

was even more than they did in the 1920s when they had no such kind of machines (50). Because

of the social pressure on and the expectations toward women to become the perfect American

housewife, women had an urge to clean and do more housework as if they were expected to do

so. Yet, besides housework, they had nothing else to do.

Marriage patterns had also changed in the 1950s, mainly due to the recurrent social

expectations. Women got married in their early 20s and gave birth to two or three children on

an average. As a result, they often had the feeling of insecurity when becoming a housewife

and having a family at such a young age. Brett Harvey in The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History

(2002) made interviews with some women who experienced the feeling of insecurity. One of

them confessed about this as follows: “I was kind of shocked to be pregnant. I wasn’t exactly

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ready. Although I had a diaphragm, I hadn’t tried very hard not to get pregnant. But there was

no reason not to have a baby “(89). Motherhood was supposed to bring joy and fulfillment to

women’s lives and having a baby was a social expectation rather than a free choice. Those

couples who did not have children were socially disapproved and deemed to be selfish. It was

expected from women to get married and have children and as Collins describes “marriage was

an unreliable basket in which to put all of your eggs” (104). In another interview also carried

out by Harvey, a woman who was married for many years, but they did not have children,

explained her feelings:

Out there, the fact that Brian and I’d been married eight or nine-year and didn’t

have any kids, everybody thought that was pretty strange. I got the impression

they thought something was wrong with us. I was unprepared for the fact that

people would come right up and ask you all kinds of questions. Just casual

friends would feel free to say, well, you’ve been married for this long and you

don’t have children, what about it? That used to astound me. (91)

The social pressure on women led to the understanding that if something was wrong then it was

surely with them. If a woman did not find fulfillment and happiness as a housewife, she was

not considered to be normal.

More and more women started to feel that their lives were empty as they had no option

besides being a housewife, and they were ashamed to talk about their problem. They felt that

they could not discuss it with anybody, especially not with their husbands because he would

not have understood it, and this led to a feeling of solitude and isolation. Glenna Matthews in

Just a Housewife (1987) offered further details about the problem what it meant to stay at home

for women and how they actually felt about it. Nobody – especially men – believed or realized

that this problem was real and was shared by thousands of women. Matthews describes

“housewifely nervousness” (194) in her book as follows: “Most housewives are nervous, both

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in their own eyes and in those of their husbands, yet rightly they are not regarded as sick. They

are uncomfortable, even unhappy, and the way out seems impossible to find” (194). As it turns

out from Matthews’s analysis the main source of the problem was that most women found

housework monotonous and the domestic environment did not offer any intellectual challenges

when they were done with all of their chores.

Another issue which contributed to the misery of the wives and mothers, was the

changing image of the American housewife. According to Friedan the housewife heroine went

through a major change between the 1930s and the 1960s which could be traced back with the

four women’s magazines (which were written and edited by men),including the Ladies’ Home

Journal, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Home Companion. In these magazines,

the ideal woman of the 1930s was depicted as a single-minded and attractive lady who was

ready to reach her goal as “a pilot, a geologist, an advertising copywriter – and meeting her

supportive hero along the way” (Friedan 110). It could be seen that the woman of the 1930s had

a purpose in her life and a career as well, but this image went through a transformation in the

1950s,and the full-time housewife position was shown as something more promising than

becoming a career woman. These women’s magazines of the 1950s strengthened the notion that

women were not supposed to think of becoming anything else but a housewife.

These were some of the important factors which led to the feeling of dissatisfaction and

women realized that there must be something more in their lives besides cooking and cleaning.

Talking about the suppressed feelings was a taboo and that is why Friedan’s The Feminine

Mystique (1963), which dared to voice these problems, was a significant breakthrough for these

women, and finally they were ready to speak up and stand out for themselves.

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2. Chapter Two: Betty Friedan As a Feminist

Betty Friedan or by her maiden name, Bettye Naomi Goldstein, was born in 1921 in

Illinois. She graduated from Smith College in psychology and after World War II she became

interested in politics and started to work as a reporter. That was the first time when she began

to argue for women’s rights as she was an active member of the feminist movements. She got

married to Carl Friedan in 1947 and later on they had three children. During her third pregnancy

she decided to stay at home but continued working as a journalist and writer (Michals, “Betty

Friedan”). Sometimes she felt ashamed for writing and she hid it “since none of the other

mothers on River Road “worked”” (Friedan 134). It must have been hard for her to stay at home

as she was always an active member of the society. Friedan was writing for women’s magazines

and she explained that she was “losing her zest for those conventional women’s magazines

articles” (Friedan 94). After both of her sons, Daniel and Jonathan went to school she was still

staying at home with Emily, but she felt that being just a housewife was not enough for her. In

Life So Far (2000) she recalls that besides writing articles she enjoyed taking part in social and

voluntary events at the school her children attended.

In 1957 she joined her Smith College reunion and was asked to do a questionnaire

among her former classmates. She cooperated with two of her friends, Mario Ingersoll Howell

and Anne Mather Montero. Later on, this questionnaire was the basis of her major book, The

Feminine Mystique (1963). Her intention was to get to know more about these women who

became housewives, and if they were happy with their lives, or whether they missed a career as

they did not make use the knowledge they had gained through their college years. The survey

included questions on marriage:

About “Your Marriage” we asked: Is your marriage truly satisfying? How does

it compare with your expectation of marriage? How does it change with the

years? To what extent to you talk to your husband about your deepest feelings?

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Do you believe the same things are important? How do you make major

decisions (together, or which his, which yours)? (Friedan 99)

Friedan also inquired women about childbirth and family planning:

About “Your Children”: Did you plan your children’s birth? Did you enjoy

pregnancy? Were you depressed after birth? Did you fear childbirth? Exult in it?

Take it in your stride? Did you breast-feed? How long? Did you try? Do, or did,

you have a problem with: Eating? Toilet training? Discipline? Do you have fun

with your children? As a mother, do you usually feel: Harassed? Martyred?

Contented? Do you try hard to be a good mother? Or just let it work itself out?

Do you feel you are a good mother? Or guilty that you aren’t? (Friedan 99)

It was important that Friedan had the courage to ask housewives about childbirth because

previously such questions were considered to be taboos. Nobody cared about how the mother

actually felt or what it was like to stay at home with her children, so with these question Friedan

helped women talk about it more openly.

Another significant point to take into consideration was that most women left their jobs

following their marriage, or they did not even try to pursue a career, and Friedan wanted to

know more about this issue as well:

About “The Other Part of Your Life?”: Did you have career ambitions? What?

Are you pursuing it actively? Have you given it up? Or postponed until kids are

older? If you work, is it mainly for the money? Or because you want to? Or both?

What does it cost you to work? What is your arrangement for children and house

while you work? Do you feel guilty about leaving the children? If you don’t

work, is it: From preference? Not qualified? Would you feel guilty about kids?

If your main occupation is homemaker, do you find it totally fulfilling? Are you

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frustrated? Have you managed to find a satisfying interest outside your home?

Do you find volunteer works as satisfying as professional? Please describe any

“professional” volunteer work – over and above routine or occasional volunteer

tasks. (Friedan 100)

Besides the questions mentioned above, Friedan included questions related to financial issues,

sex life, political life, social life, religious life and personal questions. She wanted women to

answer these questions openly and talk about their feelings honestly. When she sent the

questionnaires, she received around two hundred responses and was surprised that in the

responses some more questions were raised in certain fields. With the help of the answers

Friedan was able to identify the possible source of the housewife problem which was “keeping

American women from ‘adjusting to their role as women’, but that narrow definition of “the

role of women””. (Friedan 101).

Friedan also wrote an article for McCall’s about higher education and whether quitting

their studies makes women frustrated, or the cause of their misery rises from being a woman.

Unfortunately, the article was not published because it was too shocking for the newspaper –

which clearly demonstrated that the problem Friedan wished to expose and call attention to still

remained unrecognized. Editor of Redbook, Robert Stein’s comments underline this as follows:

“Betty has always done good work for us before. But she must be going off her rocker. Only

the most neurotic housewife will identify with this” (Friedan 103). After getting this feedback

Friedan kept on conducting the interviews, and in April 1959, the problem that many women

shared was getting clear for her. She was having coffee with four other mothers when one of

them was mentioning “the problem” and everybody knew what she was talking about. That was

the point when Friedan had realized “the problem that has no name” (Friedan 104). In Life So

Far (2000) she describes that all the women’s magazines wrote about topics including how to

clean perfectly or how to keep their husbands happy but none of these magazines problematized

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the dissatisfaction that the housewives experienced or mentioned a solution for it. These

magazines were writing of women who pursued careers as poets or physicists as unfeminine

and they often claimed that those women who were intelligent would not be unsatisfied as

housewives (Friedan 104).

Friedan got another negative feedback from another editor who also claimed that she was

wrong – undermining her work and efforts, and the result of the questionnaire and the

interviews. Yet, she was confident that she was not wrong at all. That was the point when

Friedan realized that the information collected from the interviews could make a change in

women’s history and their publication could have an effect on women’s role in the society.

Having the needed amount of information, she started to write her groundbreaking book, The

Feminine Mystique (1963).

2.1.The Problem

When Friedan started writing the book, she knew that it was going to be something

serious and more important than all her other works and articles before. In Life So Far (2000)

she recalled that the New York Public Library opened a new room for writers who were working

on a book and needed a quiet place to work, and Friedan decided to take the chance, as she had

more time when her children were at school. Most of the writers in the library were men and

unfortunately, they did not take Friedan seriously. She remembers of this as follows:

We’d have lunch together in the cafeteria in the library basement. They were

writing biographies, novels, a children’s book about baseball, but I soon gave up

trying to tell them what I was writing about. They thought it was a big joke, a

book about women. They kidded me about it, ceaselessly. I don’t like talking

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about what I’m writing anyhow, it makes me nervous, takes the edge off,

somehow. But I didn’t enjoy their jokes. (Friedan 108)

Even though most men made fun of Friedan’s research and the book, she did not give up.

Besides writing she was making interviews with educated suburban housewives and in 1960

she made an article for the magazine, Good Housekeeping drawing on her previously made

interviews. When Friedan’s article was published of the title “Problem That Has No Name” it

became so successful that women from all over the US wrote letters to the magazine, writing

about how much they could identify with the problem which Friedan exposed in her article.

These responses and the intensity of the feedback clearly showed that the problem was rather

widespread among women.

Friedan wished to gain a full understanding of the social and political causes of the

feminine mystique. She believed that the feminine mystique was probably caused by identity

crisis and the realization that they wanted more than becoming a housewife. As a former

psychology student, Friedan aimed to study the psychology of the identity crisis and the ego:

They had to prove that women were human. They had to prove that a woman

was not a passive, empty mirror, not a frilly, useless decoration, not a mindless

animal, not a thing to be disposed of by others, incapable of a voice in her own

existence, before they could even begin to fight for the rights women needed to

become the human equals of men. (115)

Another important aspect of the discrimination that women experienced was the way society

treated women. They were seen as somebody who was supposed to stay at home while men had

a lot of possibilities: “Changeless woman, childish woman, a woman’s place is in the home,

they were told. But man was changing; his place was in the world and his world was widening.

Woman was being left behind. They also had the human need to grow” (Friedan 115). This kind

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of thinking was dominant even in the 20th century and due to prevailing social and gender norms

women could rarely become more than housewives. Men could participate in education and

politics without any obstacles while women had rather limited chances. Although in the 1950s

women already had the right to vote, but still they were not seen equal to men and the changes

which were brought by first wave feminism were not accepted by the society:

‘Feminist’, like ‘career woman,’ had become a dirty word. The feminists had

destroyed the old image of women, but they could not erase the hostility, the

prejudice, the discrimination that still remained. Nor could they paint the new

image of what women might become when they grew up under conditions that

no longer made them inferior to men, dependent, passive. (Friedan 120)

A woman’s life had been always influenced by men. In a girl’s life the figure of her father was

very dominant, while upon marriage the needs and wishes of the husband enjoyed priority.

Women did not have their own true identities as they had been always influenced, often even

oppressed by a male figure in their lives. It is also important to mention that those girls who

were growing up at the beginning of the 20th century had mothers who were still suppressed by

a rigid, male-oriented world all along their lives. As Friedan contends: “These mothers were

probably the real models for the man-eating myth; the shadow of the contempt and self-

contempt which could turn a gentle housewife into a domineering shrew also turned some of

their daughters into angry copies of men” (Friedan 120). There was no strong and independent

female role models for little girls and even if some mothers wanted to pursue a career, they

“were treated as freaks” (Friedan 120). But these girls’ situation was different from that of the

previous generations, because they did not have to fight for basic rights as previous generations

already had fought for them. It meant that “they had truly outgrown the old image; they were

finally free to be what they chose to be” (Friedan 121). Women were ready to meet the world

and new challenges, but unfortunately the world was not ready for them. Friedan believed that

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this problem was also psychological, therefore she started to study Sigmund Freud’s

psychological concepts in order to understand the psychological dimensions of the feminine

mystique. According to Freud women were jealous of men because they envy the penis. Friedan

disagreed and rather believed that women envied the possibilities that had been always available

for men but not for women:

One sees simply that Victorian culture gave women many reasons to envy men:

the same conditions, in fact, that the feminists fought against. If a woman who

was denied the freedom, the status and the pleasures that men enjoyed wished

secretly that she could have those things, in the shorthand of the dream, she might

wish herself a man and see herself with that one thing which made men

unequivocally different – the penis. She would, of course, have to learn to keep

her envy, her anger, hidden to play the child, the doll, the toy for her destiny

depended on charming men. But underneath, it might still fester, sickening for

her love. (Friedan 128)

All in all, the problem with Freud’s beliefs was that Freud assumed that women were inferior

to men and he saw them “as childlike dolls, who existed in terms of only men’s love to love

man and serve his needs” (Friedan 124), a claim with which Friedan did not agree. Freud’s

beliefs were rather discriminative and therefore his psychology could not really enrich her

findings.

Education was also the source of dissatisfaction. In many cases the “curriculum was

designed to create competent and happy housewives” (Collins 57). It meant that even if women

participated in higher education, they did not study in order to get a good job in the labor market,

their only goal was to become a housewife. The purpose of Radcliffe College, for example, was

to prepare “splendid wives and mothers and their reward might be to marry Harvard men”

(Collins 57). Friedan believed that the main problem was that after finishing their studies,

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women were “sent home again and that it was bad for them, and not only for them but for their

families” (Friedan 134). As Friedan was a mother and a wife, just like other housewives she

wrote about, she exactly knew how they felt and what the feminine mystique meant for them.

2.2.The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Having conducted several interviews and having studied the housewife problem, Friedan

finally published her book in 1963, which soon became a huge success. She did not think that

her book would be “threatening to those who couldn’t deal with that change, men and women”

(Friedan 135). It was new to read about the unhappiness that American housewives had to deal

with, as previously only the joyful side of their lives was shown.

The basis of Friedan’s book was the interview answers given by her Smith College

classmates. It was time to reveal the statements which were “unspoken, for many years in the

minds of American women” (Friedan 11). As Friedan describes in The Feminine Mystique

(1963) some women were so desperate that they just wanted to run away or cry all the time.

They believed that there was no escape from this pain. One of the women who were interviewed

by Friedan said the following:

I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do – hobbies, gardening, pickling,

canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA

tea. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about

– any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was

to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home.

There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to

feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and putter-on of pants and a

beadmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who

am I? (Friedan 17)

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Women did not want to follow in their mothers’ footsteps who were always seen unhappy and

disappointed. The actual problem was that “American women no longer knew who they are”

(Friedan 64). It also hurt them that in most cases they were mentioned as “the children’s

mommy, or the minister’s wife” (Friedan 23) and never as themselves. They were forced into

the role of the housewife at such a young age that they did not have time to get to know more

about themselves. Women became wives and mothers so early that they did not know how to

handle all this pressure which was put on them. Another respondent of Friedan’s survey

claimed:

I ask myself why I’m so dissatisfied. I’ve got my health, fine children, a lovely

new home, enough money. My husband has a real future as an electronics

engineer. He doesn’t have any of these feelings. He says maybe I need a

vacation, let’s go to New York for a weekend. But that isn’t it. I always had this

idea we should do everything together. I can’t sit down and read a book alone.

If the children are napping and I have one hour to myself I just walk through the

house waiting for them to wake up. I don’t make a move I know where the rest

of the crowd is going. It’s as if ever since you were a little girl, there’s always

been somebody or something that will take care of your life: your parents, or

college, or falling in love, or having a child, or moving to a new house. Then you

wake up one morning and there’s nothing to look forward to. (17)

These interviews gave more evidence for the identity problem which women had to struggle

with and there was no possible solution to it. Friedan states in The Feminine Mystique (1963)

that more and more housewives started to visit a psychiatrist as they were dissatisfied with their

lives and “unmarried women patients were happier than married ones” (Friedan 20,21). These

women’s lives were monotonous, and they were like slaves in their own homes:

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My days are all busy, and dull, too. All I ever do is mess around. I get up at eight

– I make breakfast, so I do the dishes, have lunch, do some more dishes, and

some laundry and cleaning in the afternoon. Then it’s supper dishes and I get to

sit down a few minutes, before the children have to be sent to bed. That’s all

there is to my day. It’s just like any other wife’s day. (Friedan 22)

Women kept repeating the same tasks everyday and if they thought about the fact that their lives

were passing by them without having any purpose, they felt hopeless. Because of the monotony

of their lives they tried to challenge themselves in the household chores in order to reach some

kind of satisfaction:

You do want something more, only you don’t know what it is. So you put even

more into housekeeping. It’s not challenging enough, just ironing dresses for

your little girls, so you go in for ruffly dresses that need more ironing, and bake

your own bread, and refuse to get a dishwasher. You think if you make a big

enough challenge out of it, then somehow it will be satisfying. And still it wasn’t.

(Friedan 327,328)

Friedan realized that all the factors which led to the feminine mystique had been present

for a longer period of time:

It is far more important than anyone recognizes. It is the key to these other new

and old problems which have been torturing women and their husbands and

children, and puzzling their doctors and educators for years. It may well be the

key to our future as a nation and a culture. We can no longer ignore that voice

within women that says: “I want something more than my husband and my

children and my home.” (Friedan 27)

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Friedan’s book served as a helping hand for thousands of women in America after they realized

that they are not alone with their feelings. A woman from Connecticut explained the following:

“I’ve got tears in my eyes with sheer relief that my own inner turmoil is shared with other

women” (Friedan 28). Another housewife from Ohio said: “The times when I felt that the only

answer was to consult a psychiatrist, times of anger, bitterness and general frustration too

numerous to even mention, I had no idea that hundreds of other women were feeling the same

way. I felt so completely alone (Friedan 28).

Now Friedan’s book presented the problem, but at first women did not know how to

face changes which were about to come. In a certain way, women had to reorganize their lives

and start to think of their roles in the society differently. In one of the last chapters in The

Feminine Mystique (1963), Friedan tries to give advice to these women on how to start their

lives over. First of all, she describes that women should understand that being a housewife is

not a full-time job, and they can have careers besides being a mother and a wife. Secondly,

women should consider marriage and motherhood in a different way. They should become

individuals and pursue their own lives outside of their homes:

Somehow, once I began to have the sense of myself, I became aware of my

husband. Before, it was like he was part of me, not a separate human being. I

guess it wasn’t till I stopped trying to be feminine that I began to enjoy being a

woman. (Friedan 329)

As Friedan advised, it was important for women to find a job and work could help them deal

with the feminine mystique. By getting a job they had an opportunity to become an active part

of the society and it could give them a kind of fulfillment which they could not achieve before.

Women had the chance to change their lives if they were determined enough. Friedan had a

huge influence on thousands of women and with her help they set up a new life plan for

themselves. A woman from New England talks about it as follows:

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Now I’m studying history, one course a year. It’s work, but I haven’t missed a

night in 2 ½ years. Soon I’ll be teaching. I love being a wife and mother, but I

know now that when marriage is the end of your life, because you have no other

missions, it becomes a miserable, tawdry thing. Who said women have to be

happy, to be amused, to be entertained? You have to work. You don’t have to

have a job. But you have to tackle something yourself, and see it through, to feel

alive. (Friedan 331)

Finding a job and work could give women a sense of purpose, and a result a lot of women felt

that motherhood became more enjoyable and that they could spend quality time with their

families.

Accepting the new social patterns and the changing gender norms were not easy for the

families and for the society either, and this also manifested in Friedan’s personal situation. She

had to face difficulties in her life after she became famous with her book. Her husband, Carl

could not bear the fact that her wife was becoming more and more popular. They had many

arguments and in some cases, Friedan was seriously beaten by Carl. Despite this, she did not

do anything against it:

When it was happening to me, if I am honest about it, I think I colluded in it. I

think if I had made it clear to Carl that I would leave him if he didn’t stop hitting

me, he probably would have stopped. But I didn’t. I know I am blaming the

victim, even if the victim was me, but I think I accepted the abuse because I

didn’t have the nerve somehow, to get out, or make it clear that I would get out.

(Friedan 166)

Friedan knew that she also needed to make a difference in her life. Another major change came

in her life in 1966 when she became one of the founders of the National Organization for

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Women. With The Feminine Mystique (1963) the real fight for women’s rights started and the

women’s movement was the next step to reach equality.

23

3. Chapter Three: The Women’s Movement

The National Organization for Women started in 1965, when Friedan went to

Washington on a weekly basis in order to do some research for her next book. During her stay

in Washington, Friedan and Pauli Murray, “a brilliant lawyer and articulate black woman”

(Friedan 165) met other women who were working for the government. These women had had

enough of sex discrimination in their workplaces and they were ready to take action against it.

Although previously there had been attempts to stop discrimination against women in the labor

market, with Title VII in the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but most of these attempts were violated.

Friedan wanted to help these women, and in order to get some information on about the

inequalities against women, she visited the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

(EEOC), the agency which protects people against workplace discrimination. She had

discussions with Richard Graham, a Republican appointee working for the EEOC who claimed

that their agency and Title VII still were not taken seriously. Most of the job descriptions were

advertised by sex, female and male jobs separately. Graham called Friedan’s attention to a

typical case of job discrimination against women, and explained to her that those women who

worked as stewardesses were fired if they got pregnant, or if they were over 35. Graham and

Friedan realized that a new organization was needed, one which would act and speak on the

behalf of all the oppressed women.

Friedan was seen as a leader in this organization. She was already famous and “could

attract attention” (Friedan 169). With the help of Friedan’s book, women understood that they

could be more than a housewife, but a new way of thinking in the society was needed as well.

Something revolutionary was needed because discrimination affected several women’s lives.

On June 28 in 1966, Friedan met 20 other women who also wanted to make a change, including

Kay Clarenbach, Catherine Conroy and Mary Eastwood. At first, most of them were afraid to

start an organization but on the following day something happened. The resolutions made by

24

their group were not accepted on the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status

of Women on June 29. Friedan and the other members got angry and they knew that something

must be done against it. During lunch they decided that the name of their organization would

be National Organization for Women (NOW). Friedan wrote on a napkin the following: “to

take the actions needed to bring women into the mainstream of American society now,

exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof, in truly equal partnership with men”

(Friedan 174).

In 1966 October the NOW was launched with approximately 300 members. Kay

Clarenbach had an office in Wisconsin so she was responsible for the administrative

responsibilities of the organization. Richard Graham was chosen to be the vice president and

Friedan was the first president, sharing her leadership with Clarenbach who was the chairman

of the movement. According to website of the National Organization for Women, the first

conference of the organization was between October 29 and 30 in 1966, when the group wanted

the enforcement of Title VII. After the conference the NOW became more and more popular,

even Eleanor Roosevelt’s granddaughter sent a bill to the organization (“Founding”).

The NOW is active up until nowadays, with members all over the world. The

organization deals with different kind of campaigns and projects. They encourage women to

accept their bodies and they also help those women who face crisis in their families. They

actively fight for women’s equality and against discrimination in education, workplace and

politics (“Who We Are”).

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Conclusion

Having examined some of the major problems that women had to face in the 1950s I

can conclude that the dissatisfaction and the feeling of purposelessness stemmed from the

pervasive social expectations toward American women was to stay at home and be confined to

their domestic spheres. The world was open for men, full of possibilities, while women were

trapped in their homes without any future plans. Although the first wave of feminism was

thought to have positive outcomes by winning political rights, but there was no real change at

all.

Women’s hopelessness was growing in the 1950s which was caused by many issues.

They were expected to be married at a young age and because of that they did not have a chance

to develop their own true selves and identities. Even though many of them attended college or

university, they knew that they were not going to use their knowledge in life. The problem was

rising from the social expectations and pressure that was put on them. The feeling of solitude

was growing as they could not discuss “the problem” with anyone. After reading Friedan’s

book, The Feminine Mystique (1963) American women could realize that the problem was not

with them, but with the society. The second wave of feminism began, and Friedan’s book

influenced and empowered women to change their lives and become more than a housewife.

After founding one of the greatest feminist organizations which is still active, the National

Organization for Women, Friedan actively participated in feminist movements. She was

fighting for female equality and against sex discrimination in the workplaces. She was the one

who changed a whole generation’s life and women’s history forever.

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