Anti-feminist propaganda undermined efforts to promote women’s rights and culminated in the publication of the bestseller Modern Woman: The Lost Sex in 1942, which emphasized the need for women to return to the home and give up their high-paying jobs in war production. The “lost” women were the independent ones interested in science, art and politics, and those engaged in careers beyond their domestic sphere. The book described feminism as an “expression of emotional illness, of neurosis … at its core a deep illness”.
