The Feminine Mystique

by Betty Friedan

But it is a fact, documented by history, if not in the clinic or laboratory, that man has always searched for knowledge and truth, even in the face of the greatest danger. Further, recent studies of psychologically healthy people have shown that this search, this concern with great questions, is one of the defining characteristics of human health. There is something less than fully human in those who have never known a commitment to

an idea, who have never risked an exploration of the unknown, who have never attempted the kind of creativity of which men and women are potentially capable. As A. H. Maslow puts it: Capacities clamor to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are well used. That is, capacities are also needs. Not only is it fun to use our capacities, but it is also necessary. The unused capacity or organ can become a disease center or else atrophy, thus diminishing the person.12

As for the unmarried woman scholars, they must no longer be treated like lepers. The simple truth is that they have taken their existence seriously, and have fulfilled their human

potential. They might well be, and often are, envied by women who live the very image of opulent togetherness, but have forfeited themselves. Women, as well as men, who are rooted in human work are rooted in life.

this is me

Whether they knew it or not, they were following a life plan. They had their babies before or after internship, between fellowships. If good full-time help was not available in the children’s early years, they gave up their jobs and took a part-time post that may not have paid handsomely, but kept them moving ahead in their profession.

yes, but did this justify the move to 40% to 60% part time at the universities today? It almost seems like this willingness to split ones time between mother and professional gave administrators permission to stop giving full time/full benefit employment. Now the trap is getting full time, and being treated like a full professional and not a part-time mom and part-time professional.

And, because of the mystique, many suffered unnecessary pains of guilt. It took, and still takes, extraordinary strength of purpose for women to pursue their own life plans when society does not expect it of them. However, unlike the trapped housewives whose problems multiply with the years, these women solved their problems and moved on. They resisted the mass persuasions and manipulations, and did not give up their own, often painful, values for the comforts of conformity.

or did they? It seems we have run into a new dilemma.

The identity crisis in men and women cannot be solved by one generation for the next; in our rapidly changing society, it must be faced continually, solved only to be faced again in the span of a single lifetime.

prophetic!! yes, in my life time, we have moved from identity of the binary genders, to identity crisis of the multi-genders.

Whole learned journals were devoted to the discussion of “women and their options”—the “stages” of women’s lives. Women, we were told, could go to school, work a bit, get married, stay with the children fifteen to twenty years, and then go back to school and work—no problem; no need for role conflicts. The women who were advancing this theory were among the exceptional few to reach top jobs because they somehow had not dropped out for fifteen or twenty years. And these same women were advising the women flocking back to their continuing-education programs that they couldn’t really expect to get real jobs or professional training after fifteen years at home; ceramics, or professional volunteer work—that was the realistic adjustment.

yes, the real crime is perpetuation of this lie.

Perhaps women who have made it as “exceptional” women don’t really identify

wow! This raises a lot of questions! Could this be true even today, are "exceptional women", or women of exceptional privilege holding "other women" back? Must look at census reports about which women are holding the highest ranking positions; is it top tier college grads or equal distribution?

with other women. For them, there are three classes of people: men, other women, and themselves; their very status as exceptional women depends on keeping other women quiet, and not rocking the boat.)

How could we ever really know or love each other as long as we played those roles that kept us from knowing or being ourselves? Weren’t men as well as women still locked in lonely isolation, alienation, no matter how many sexual acrobatics they put their bodies through? Weren’t men dying too young, suppressing fears and tears and their own tenderness? It seemed to me that men weren’t really the enemy—they were fellow victims, suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

Yes, and we are still suffering today. What is identity today but yet another incarnation of the feminine and masculine mystiques. Gender identity is still being dream according to this binary conflict.

And then I realized how much money the airlines saved by firing those pretty stewardesses before they had time to accumulate pay increases, vacation time, and pension rights. And

they have not stopped. it is still done but now in every profession

Persuading the NOW board that we should hold a Congress to Unite Women with the young radicals despite differences in ideology and style . . . So many way stations. I admired the flair of the young radicals when they got off the rhetoric of sex/class warfare and conducted actions like picketing the Miss America beauty contest in Atlantic City. But the media began to publicize, in more and more sensational terms, the more exhibitionist, down-with-men, down-with-marriage, down-with-childbearing rhetoric and actions. Those who preached the man-hating sex/class warfare threatened to take over the New York NOW and the national NOW and drive out the women who wanted equality but who also wanted to keep on

okay, the "hate other" movement is dominating today. So what now? Any movement that uses an identity brand isolating one presumably less privileged identity will dissolve into hate speech toward the other presumably privileged identity group.

Four decades later, millions of individual transformations later, there is still so much to learn from this book about how sex and home and work and norms are used to twist the lives of women into weird and unnatural shapes. It set off a social and political explosion, yet it also speaks to the incomplete rebuilding of the leveled landscape. “Giving a name to the problem that had no name was the necessary first step,” Friedan concludes in the epilogue. “But it wasn’t enough.” Much, much more was necessary to change our lives. But as a first step, this one is extraordinary.

Yes, this book started the discussion in search of both a definition of an unidentified problem, and a solution. However, the can was just kicked down the road. We are still suffering the oppression of a too narrow definition of human identity.

It also masks the real threats now to women’s empowerment and men’s—the culture of corporate greed, the downsizing of jobs hitting even college-educated white males, with nearly a 20 percent loss of income in the last five years, to say nothing of minority, blue-collar, and those with less education.1 A

yes, the move to adjuncting what use to be full time jobs

areas such as the health professions, are the part of the economy that is growing, but those jobs are increasingly being “contracted out,” put on a temporary or contingent basis without benefits. Many women’s

but it is nit satisfying and it is a form of labor trap. We don't have security, benefits or enough pay to live on one salary.

Easier to deflect the rage by turning women and men, black and white, young and old, against each other than to openly confront the excessive power of corporate greed. I would like to see

yes, the identity wars

We may now begin to glimpse the new human possibilities when women and men are finally free to be themselves, know each other for who they really are, and define the terms and measures of success, failure, joy, triumph, power, and the common good, together.

yes, we must move away from the conflicts between the two if we want to progress to empowering of the many identities that do not need to identify themselves according to the binary gender mystiques.

I guess—of women have said to me, “It changed my whole life,” I wrote, “Courage to us all on the new road.” Because there is no turning back on that road. It has to change your whole life; it certainly changed mine.

start of new book?