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| Betty Friedan in a protest for gender equality. |
It was not until the August of 1920 did women finally secure the right to vote, and ever since then, the fight for women’s rights and equality had seem to be a never-ending struggle. Really, it was not until Title IX did women achieve full equality. But the ten or so years leading up to Title IX, it was Betty Friedan, an American author and proud feminist, who led the second-wave of feminism in full force.
Ironically, Friedan did experience sexism in the workplace when she was dismissed from her job (as a journalist who covered women’s oppression) due to her pregnancy. However, this allowed her to work on and publish her book: The Feminine Mystique. Here is one of the most popular excerpts of the book: “The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all?’” In her book, Friedan criticized the evident gender roles, especially those plaguing the middle-class lifestyle. Essentially, Friedan used her book to investigate how stereotypes of women were harmful and when those perceptions first came to be. The term “feminine mystique” was familiarized in the 1950s and identified all women soft and submissive. Friedan's writing sought to inspire the modern feminist movement among the women of the middle-class.
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| The founders of NOW. |
In 1966, Friedan along with Yale law professor Dr. Pauli Murray (and with the assistance of a few more women activists) founded the National Organization for Women, or NOW. It was during the Third National Conference of Commission on the Status of Women when a couple of women attending the conference decided to gather in Friedan's hotel room to discuss the issues and challenges regarding sex discrimination in employment. Those 28 women decided that an official organization was necessary to fight against gender inequality and discrimination, and that was the start of the National Organization for Women. Friedan would become the first president of the organization.
Works Cited
"Betty Friedan." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 01 Mar. 2017. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
"Founding." National Organization for Women. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
Napikoski, Linda. "What Is the Feminine Mystique?" ThoughtCo. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
I liked how in depth you went with the feminist movement. Not only did you explain the book's popularity and the foundation of NOW, but you dug further into their effects and the meaning behind her movement. I learned from this post that this movement mostly pertained to middle-class women. Why do you think that not as many upper class or lower class women paid attention to, or became an activist for their own cause. I found an interesting article about the four waves of feminism throughout U.S. History. https://www.pacificu.edu/about-us/news-events/four-waves-feminism
ReplyDeleteThis was a good informative post. It was specific and you went more in-depth on things that had been glazed over in documentaries at class. However, I'm curious about what Friedan thought about other movements. Did she support the queer liberation movement? Or did she reject it for the gender binary? I think it's interesting to examine how some movements for freedom can end up marginalizing other movements and pushing them to the side, and it seems like second-wave feminism can sometimes be too focused on white feminism without examining intersectionality.
ReplyDeleteI like this post because it uses nice quotes and pictures along with the information. It's interesting that what this movement's values are still talked about and debated today, like gender roles that are still prevalent today. It's interesting that she was dismissed from her job due to being pregnant, which allowed her to write The Feminine Mystique.
ReplyDeleteGreat post of the urgency and uprising of the feminism movement. You did a great job using the specific leader, Friedan, and her book to use as your main source of evidence because her book was very influential during that time period. Its heartwarming to know that now there are many women like Friedan that are working to gain equal rights still today.
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