THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. BETTY FRIEDAN. 1963


“No… I don’t want four different kinds of soap.” (p277)

Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique1 in 1963. Her aim was to reveal a deep, pervasive cultural trend that was harming women—in particular, middle class American women. You may be familiar with cultural images of the 1950s housewife. It’s an ideal that many girls and women aspired to at the time. Yet when they achieved it, they were infamously unhappy about it. Today, it’s seen as the epitome of sexist, limiting stereotypes. But at the time, when people were living inside the myth, they couldn’t see those harms as clearly as we do. It seemed natural, true, unquestionable. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan did the difficult work of questioning this myth, from the inside.

Betty Friedan’s book was about (presumably white?) middle class women who were discouraged from working, not poor women who worked due to financial necessity. Gail Dines2 has described Friedan as a liberal feminist, and distinguishes her from radical feminism by explaining that Friedan focuses on individual empowerment for privileged women, rather than the collective, class interests of all women. The distinction between individual empowerment and material class interests will be crucial for understanding radical feminism. Knowing that The Feminine Mystique refers to a specific culture, era, and class, we might wonder how salient the book is today. Despite the current trend of “tradwives,” who extol the benefits of traditional gender roles, it doesn’t look as though the feminine mystique is making a big comeback. So is Friedan’s work still relevant?

Yes, it is.

It’s relevant because anti-feminist myths still prevail in every culture, and defeating patriarchal myths is central to the radical feminist project, so it is not only a liberal feminist concern. Although the specific content of the myths has changed, many of the “myth-making” mechanisms are the same. Friedan attempts to chart the causes of the myth: who invented it, how did it become so popular, why did it overpower earlier feminist sentiments, and why was it so persistent despite the unhappiness it caused? How did women get trapped in the myth, and what would it take for them to break free?

As we work through The Feminine Mystique, therefore, we will be keeping an eye out for insights about how cultural change and cultural stagnation can occur around women’s roles. Hopefully we’ll get some clues about where to search for the modern myth-makers and -propagators.

Firstly we’ll look at what Friedan said about the mystique itself, and see how it was a step backward after a period of feminist progress. Secondly, we’ll look at who and what she thought was responsible for the mystique; particularly magazines and other media, Freudians, functionalists, educators and advertisers. Thirdly, we’ll consider Friedan’s view on what women should do with their lives instead of baking twelve different desserts. Finally, I’ll try to spin out as many lessons as I can that might be relevant for our feminist work today.

There are some parts of the book I disagreed with, such as some Freudian-inspired homophobia, but it isn’t relevant to the main themes, so I will not belabour it. With that caveat, let us see what Friedan has to offer.

All quotes are from Friedan, from the book, unless otherwise noted.

WHAT IS THE MYSTIQUE?

“Young and frivolous, almost childlike; fluffy and feminine; gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies and home… where is the world of thought and ideas, the life of the mind and spirit?” (p23)

The feminine mystique was a cultural image of womanhood that shaped the lives of middle class women in the 1950s in America. “Mystique” is Friedan’s term for a set of gendered stereotypes—what de Beauvoir would call a myth of womanhood. The feminine mystique in particular is the picture of women as exclusively domestic caretakers: women whose sole purpose in life is as housewife and stay-at-home-mother. It incorporates all the cultural pressures that shepherded women into these roles (and away from careers) and trapped them there despite their unhappiness.

Friedan describes how, in the fifteen years after the second world war, women devoted themselves to home, husband, and children with great fervour. Society—in the form of experts, advertisers, manufacturers, TV, newspapers and magazines—encouraged them vigorously. The ideal of the sweet, happy housewife was held up as a model for women and girls, and they emulated it. Magazines for women give some idea of what was expected of them; Friedan lists common topics including homemaking advice, beauty advice, and advice on how to catch a man (tip: lose at tennis! Your man will not be charmed if you defeat him!) But the magazines contained no mention of politics or the outside world, because editors insisted women didn’t understand them, weren’t interested in them, and wouldn’t read them. Short stories were mostly about young women finding love. They very occasionally portrayed career women, but only in order to show them realising their mistake and giving up work in order to settle down. The stories also suggested that men are allured by feminine helplessness. Women were encouraged to exaggerate their own ignorance, weakness, and timidity in order to flatter men and prevent them moving on to more convincing rescue projects (that is, more “feminine” women who “needed” their help).

Women and girls were, according to Friedan, enthusiastically complicit. They made the search for a husband central to their lives, beginning in high school. They married young, or took light, half-hearted courses at university as a way to kill time before marrying. They had more babies than generations before. They devoted their lives to family and housework. This was supposed to make them happy and fulfilled: “Women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity.” (p5) Women and girls were so devoted to achieving feminine fulfilment that they avoided anything that might interfere with their femininity. For example, Friedan tells of girls who refused classes in physics, and women who refused a cancer medication with “unfeminine” side effects!

But the promise of fulfillment was a lie. Many women in this role were desperately unhappy, and Friedan notes the high incidence amongst housewives of depression, alcoholism, psychosis, suicide attempts, and a variety of fatigues and other physical ills that doctors couldn’t explain. Women took tranquilisers and saw therapists. But without the benefit of an analysis that could explain their common experiences, women interpreted their problems within the framework of the feminine mystique. Each woman assumed that “something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives.” (p8) Because femininity was said to be enough to make them happy, those who were unhappy concluded that they had failed at their “feminine adjustment”.

“This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say. For human suffering there is a reason; perhaps the reason has not been found because the right questions have not been asked, or pressed far enough.” (p15)

I believe there are a few key lessons we ought to understand about the feminine mystique and how it came about. Firstly, the mystique followed a cultural era of feminist values, which it overwhelmed. We must try to understand how this regression happened. Secondly, the social sciences, medical experts, and educational institutions played an important role in propagating the mystique. It’s dangerous to assume that institutions and experts will always be progressive, especially when it comes to women. Thirdly, the mystique might never have had the reach and persistence it enjoyed without millions of dollars in advertising money and carefully researched tactics of manipulation. It’s so easy to see the destructive effect of these manipulations when we know, in retrospect, that the myths they promoted were harmful. Why, then, do advertisers receive so little criticism today?


A HISTORICAL SET-BACK Progress is Not Inevitable

“The ones who fought that battle won more than empty paper rights. They cast off the shadow of contempt and self-contempt that had degraded women for centuries.” (p76)

The feminine mystique was not merely a seamless continuation of historical sexism. It was a backwards step on what Friedan calls “the passionate journey”. Friedan recalls how the first wave of feminists fought for the right to vote and to receive an education. Afterwards, women also started trying to describe new images of womanhood. Examining short stories in magazines, Friedan finds a sharp change in portrayals of women from about 1950 onward. In the 1940s, there were stories of adventurous, clever, independent young women who met men as peers whilst on journeys to discover themselves. But from 1950 onward, these heroines were replaced with girls seeking only love and marriage. Independent and adventurous women came to be seen as aggressive and neurotic.

“Words like ‘emancipation’ and ‘career’ sounded strange and embarrassing; no one had used them for years.” (p8)

From Friedan’s description of the first wave, it seems that most women were not feminists. The feminists were widely ridiculed as unfeminine, bitter, man-hating, unfulfilled, shrill harpies—by men and women alike. That ridicule never ceased, even when the vote was won and the justice of women’s suffrage was generally accepted. Younger women, even while enjoying their rights, looked back on the older feminists with scorn or embarrassment. “The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.” And that hostility was reanimated in new forms.

Friedan quotes an anti-feminist book that was very influential in her time, Modern Woman: The Lost Sex 3: “Feminism, despite the external validity of its political program… was at its core a deep illness.” Imagine agreeing with the feminists, and nevertheless repeating this slander against them! It is hardly surprising, then, that most of the daughters and granddaughters of that generation would not be feminists, either. And so it seems feminists did not succeed at passing on their values and images to new generations nearly as well as anti-feminist cultural movements did.

“Subtle discrimination against women… is still an unwritten law today, and its effects are almost as devastating and as hard to fight as the flagrant opposition faced by the feminists.” (p148)

When the older feminists retired, they were not refreshed—they were replaced. Friedan talks to an older magazine editor, who remembers the days when stories about independent women were in fashion. She says those stories were written by women. But those women dropped out of work to have babies, and younger men moved in, writing the blueprint for the new “feminine” stories of romance and domesticity. Younger women joined the magazines, but they were only successful if they could write according to this formula. Though women helped reproduce the new image, men had shaped it—men who came home from the war and yearned for the comforts of home. The new image was exactly like the old image: woman=domestic. But it was covered with a veneer of sophistication by an array of “experts”.


FREUDIAN & FUNCTIONALIST ANTI-FEMINISM Respected Expert Nonsense

“Ideas are not like instincts of the blood that spring into the mind intact. They are communicated by education, by the printed word.” (p35)

Although the image of woman as a domestic servant was an old one, it was dressed up in charming and fashionable new attire. Friedan identifies two main intellectual sources of inspiration for the new image: Freudianism and functionalism.

In the forties, “Freudian and pseudo-Freudian theories settled everywhere, like fine volcanic ash. Sociology, anthropology, education, even the study of history and literature became permeated and transfigured by Freudian thought.” (p98) Friedan believes psychoanalysis was popular because, by focusing on the individual, it provided a distraction from the anxiety-provoking politics of the time; the war, the atom bomb, McCarthyism. Freud had one positive effect, which was to unearth the topic of sex and bring it into public discussion. Friedan says “In an earlier time, the image of woman was also split in two — the good, pure women on the pedestal, and the boss of the desires of the flesh.” (p31) Freud’s image of the femininely adjusted woman at least allowed women to have legitimate sexual desires.

Unfortunately, Freud’s thinking on women was harmful in other ways. He thought them inferior, incomplete versions of men whose natural role was to serve as pleasant companion and helpmeet. Instead of sex, women's forbidden desire was independence. Freud asserted that all women had penis envy and this could be eased via “adjustment” to the feminine role of wife and mother. Career women were in denial, “sublimating” their penis envy into their career ambitions. As Friedan points out, Freud’s theory was immune to evidence. By interpreting career women as psycho-sexually disordered, Freud could dismiss them as counterexamples to his assertion that women were naturally unsuited for careers. The same blindness showed up in his personal life. He believed that women are naturally sweet and subservient, and on the other hand, Friedan finds in his private letters the following admission regarding his wife: “I have been trying to smash her frankness so that she should reserve opinion until she is sure of mine.”4 If women were naturally, innately subservient, the smashing would be quite unnecessary.

Freudian thought gathered a halo of authority, as though it were a new natural science. Friedan explains how this aura prevented critique: it was said only experts with years of training could understand it. Besides, it was unfalsifiable: it was said to be a truth, and one that “the human mind unconsciously resists.” (p79) If you disagree, you’re in denial. Even the unhappiness of housewives, when it became apparent, was absorbed into this theory, explained away as insufficient “adjustment” to the feminine role. And what could cause such a failure in adjustment? Why, career and education, of course.

“When questions finally had to be asked because something was obviously going wrong, they were asked so completely within the Freudian framework that only one answer was possible: education, freedom, rights are wrong for women.”
 (p97)

Next, Friedan describes functionalism, a second intellectual trend that arose in sociology and anthropology, and that fed the feminine mystique. Social scientists invented functionalism “as an attempt to make social science more ‘scientific’ by borrowing from biology.” The intent was to avoid cultural bias by studying social institutions in terms of their “function” within a society. But they ended up mistaking facts about how society was, for a guide to how society should be. They treated men and women as different but complementary, and warned women that adjusting to a man’s role—a career—might undermine the character they needed for a happy home life. They drew on the work of Margaret Mead5, the famous anthropologist who studied various pre-industrial cultures.

On the one hand, Mead’s observations showed that roles for men and women were highly flexible and culturally specific. On the other hand, Friedan accuses her of glorifying the female reproductive role; apparently Mead wrote that while men have to work in order to gain a sense of achievement, women can gain it from bearing children. Mead’s insights were not all received with equal attention by the functionalists: they ignored her conclusions about the arbitrariness and plasticity of human sexuality and sex roles, and enthusiastically adopted the idea that having children can justify women's existence. Like Freudianism, functionalism’s commitment to myths about femininity was curiously immune to opposing evidence.

“Facts are swallowed by a mystique in much the same way, I guess, as the strange phenomenon by which hamburger eaten by a dog becomes dog, and hamburger eaten by a human becomes human.” (p154-55)

Still, Friedan says this was a step on the “passionate journey” since it enabled “educated women to say ‘yes’ to motherhood as a conscious human purpose and not a burden imposed by the flesh.” (p116) It’s not Mead’s fault that the cultural mystique around childbearing became so strong that other creative pursuits for women were sidelined.


Friedan next explains how educators—in both schools and universities—reinforced the feminine mystique. Influenced by Freudianism and functionalism, they believed that the primary goal for young women was adjustment to their roles as wives and mothers. They feared that too much education or career could hinder this adjustment. So they discouraged girls from taking hard classes, and instead offered light and fluffy courses like “advanced cooking”, or functionalist indoctrination like “Mate Selection”, “Adjustment to Marriage” and “Education for Family Living”, in which critical thinking was suspended and class was conducted via role playing. The training began alarmingly young: Friedan finds a course on dating for girls of eleven to thirteen years old! And of course, when unhappy women went to therapists, they were helped with their “feminine adjustment” problems.

ADVERTISERS AS MYTHMAKERS Motivated and Powered by $$$

Intellectuals may have helped design the feminine mystique, but advertisers promoted it with an efficacy and vigour motivated by the possibility of making money. Loads of money.

“Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house?” (p166)

The advertisers knew women better than the academics did. (Is it because they didn’t indulge in grand and unfalsifiable theories, but aimed to collect predictive data they could act on?) And they manipulated women with breathtaking cynicism in order to sell more things. It’s not that they were devoted anti-feminists. As Friedan points out, there was no conspiracy, just a profit motive that happened to impact women far more negatively than it did men.

“The dilemma of business was spelled out in a survey made in 1945… The message was considered of interest to all the companies that, with the war about to end, were going to have to make consumer sales take the place of war contracts.” (p167-68)

Friedan interviewed one of the “hidden manipulators” of the marketing world, who revealed some of the surveys and research done on women, and the strategies used to manipulate them. Judging from the material Friedan shares, the advertisers were clearly aware that housewives lacked a feeling of identity, were bored, and felt guilty because their work didn’t stretch their abilities or take up all their time. Advertisers deliberately manipulated those feelings to sell the housewives products, knowing that the products could never, ever meet those women’s real needs. In fact, they spoke openly about needing to discourage women from becoming career oriented, as this was unhealthy for their profits (career women didn’t buy as much stuff).



Housewives were guilt tripped over not cooking a great enough variety of treats for their families so that they would buy more food products. They were guilt tripped over “hidden dirt” so that they would engage in deep cleaning operations every few weeks. The pretence that applications and products could be used creatively was used to alleviate the housewife’s feeling that housework is drudgery. She was manipulated into thinking that having a new and specific tool for each different household task made her an expert. Advertising researchers noted that “professionalization is a psychological defence of the housewife against being a general ‘cleaner-upper’ and menial servant for her family.” (p173) They talked about ways to create the illusion of achievement and individuality, to exalt the housewife as “protector” of her family, and to pretend that housework required knowledge and skill. Products were to be linked with spiritual feelings, a sense of security, and achievement. “The problem was to keep at bay the underlying realization which was lurking dangerously.” (p177) Namely, the realisation that most women don’t like housework, that it doesn’t require much expertise or dozens of products, and that no amount of spending is going to change this.

Friedan writes that the advertisers had an even easier time targeting teenagers in the fifties. Married teenaged girls who had never worked or studied at university “were more ‘insecure’, less independent, and easier to sell to. These young people could be told that, by buying the right things, they could achieve middle-class status, without work or study.” (p177)

The researchers understood perfectly well what was wrong with American women, and they chose to use this knowledge to try to keep women trapped in their unhappiness, in order that their misery might be used to motivate purchases. The advertisers didn’t create the feminine mystique, but they deepened and promoted it ingeniously, ruthlessly and unrelentingly.

“It is their millions that blanket the land in persuasive images, flattering the American housewife, diverting her guilt and disguising her growing sense of emptiness.”

IDENTITY, WORK, SELF-REALIZATION What is a Good Life for Women?


Friedan believes that every young person must undergo a crisis of identity as they leave childhood and decide what to do and what to be as adults. When women’s reproductive biology settles this question for them, they avoid the crisis, but also the personal growth that comes with it. Friedan sees liberty and independence as frightening but necessary steps in a good life in which a person develops a secure, meaningful identity. Because men will agree to “keep” them, women can evade this fearful and painful growth and choose more or less permanent immaturity through dependence.

“What if those who choose the path of ‘feminine adjustment’ — evading this terror by marrying at eighteen, losing themselves in having babies and the details of housekeeping — are simply refusing to grow up, to face the question of their identity?” (p57)


In addition to the inherent discomfort of freedom and growth, many women discovered that, after the war, workplaces became hostile to their advancement. Friedan explains that women were frequently passed over in favour of men, saw credit for their work go to men, or if they did advance, had to endure bitterness from the men who thought the job should have been theirs instead. She asks: what woman would want to struggle onward in a job, facing such hostility, when every intellectual and cultural voice tells her that it is right and good and natural for her to leave her job and go home?


“When a culture has erected legal, political, social, economic and educational barriers to women’s own acceptance of maturity — even after most of those barriers are down it is still easier for a woman to seek the sanctuary of the home.” (p165)

Friedan believes that working to your abilities—including intellectual and creative abilities—is a sign of human maturity, and is necessary for a good life. She cites the famous psychologist Maslow, who says that our human capacities should actually be understood as needs: “Capacities clamour to be used, and cease their clamour only when they are well used. That is, capacities are also needs.”6 Friedan argues that housework just isn’t challenging enough to stretch the capacities of most adult women. She says that housework, instead of being drawn out and expanded to create a full time job, should be finished as quickly and efficiently as possible, so we can use our energy for better things.

Some of Friedan’s contemporaries exalt housework. Friedan quotes newspaper columnist Dorothy Thompson, who writes to am insecure housewife: “You don’t realize you are expert in a dozen careers, simultaneously. ‘You might write: business manager, cook, nurse, chaffeur, dressmaker, interior decorator, accountant, caterer, teacher private secretary — or just put down philanthropist.” But Friedan isn’t convinced, saying that this romanticisation of housework is in direct proportion to the emptiness of the position, and is necessary to convince the chronically underchallenged housewife that her drudgery is actually “mystically creative”.

“The less real function that role has, the more it is decorated with meaningless details to conceal its emptiness.” (p195)

Friedan notes that flattery and exaltation is simply a new tactic to justify women’s inferior social position, one that has become necessary since feminist consciousness raising has rendered unviable the earlier tactic of insisting that women are inferior. So society moved from saying that women should stay home because they’re unfit for public life, to saying that women should stay home because it’s wonderful… either way, women are at home.

INSIGHTS AND LESSONS


What general principles or lessons can we draw from Friedan’s historically specific analysis? How can we apply them to our current situation? I want to say five things that occurred to me as I read.


Lesson One: Progress Can Stall

Progress is neither linear, nor guaranteed. Change can happen demographically, not only individually, without a single person changing their mind. In Friedan’s story, when one generation of feminists retired, they were replaced by men and younger women who didn’t share their values. So the transmission of feminist values to younger generations is a crucial task.


Lesson Two: Power Patterns Persist

As Friedan points out repeatedly, there need not be any conspiracy in order for women to be negatively affected by social phenomena. The consequences of new social arrangements are likely to fall along, and to reinforce, existing patterns of privilege and disadvantage. That is, unless we specifically design them not to. We must therefore develop the habit of always asking how women specifically are affected by social and economic change. Policy must explicitly address material and historical differences between men and women, as a matter of course, in order to avoid exacerbating disadvantage.


Lesson Three: Choice Isn’t Enough

Choice is an inadequate metric for measuring women’s wellbeing. Women chose the feminine mystique enthusiastically, according to Friedan, and many were unhappy. We are not less susceptible today. We internalise the prevailing norms of our cultures, whether they’re good for us or not. Women unconsciously incorporate norms of femininity into our desires and self-images, and a rational critique of these norms, even if it is available, is not always sufficient to loosen their hold on us. An exclusive focus on choice is unhelpful because it disappears the entire causal chain of social influences on us, right up until the last moment when our hand hovers over the four types of soap or two shades of lipstick.

We need to be more deliberate about what kind of society we’d like to build. We should be trying to produce flexible yet substantial ideas about what kinds of lives are good for women, and designing policy around them. If we don't, advertisers and other myth-makers will fill the void, and they are unlikely to have our best interests in mind. For her picture of the good life, Friedan drew on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and his ideas about self-realization, but I hope to find further discussions on this topic as I continue my second wave readings.


Lesson Four: Dispelling the Glamour

“Consider… the housewife wearing eye makeup as she vacuums the floor… Why does ‘Occupation: housewife’ require such insistent glamorizing year after year?” (p47)

Vacuuming needed glamour because most people feel that vacuuming sucks, that’s why. Our next job is to look carefully at our own modern cultural myths. What aspects of femininity are heavily romanticised or glamourised by the media? I’m not saying everything that is promoted is bad, just that it is worth casting a critical eye on whichever aspects of femininity advertisers and the media are “spruiking” most vigorously to us. We cannot assume they are motivated by our wellbeing. We must ask who profits, who benefits, from different myths of femininity.

One obvious example is romantic portrayals of prostitution, which differ so jarringly from the first person accounts of trafficked women that I have read. Another example is the popularisation of consensual violence during sex, including non-fatal strangulation (an aspect of BDSM euphemistically referred to as “breath play”). The normalisation of this form of violence as a mere “kink” has led to the rise of the “rough sex” defence, used in court by men who have killed their lovers.

Another example worth examining is motherhood. Motherhood receives great flattery that nevertheless stops short of real respect in many contexts. The exaltation consists of flowers, cards and presents, and almost exclusively positive media portrayals of motherhood. Respect would be excellent healthcare, maternity leave, affordable childcare, extensive and high quality research into maternal health and mortality (especially for black American women, for example, whose maternal outcomes are markedly worse than those of white American women) and working arrangements that help primary caretakers to succeed at their careers. I do not argue that motherhood is bad; I think it is a significant component of the good life for many women. But romanticisation makes motherhood seem like a better deal than it is under the current conditions, and takes the pressure off societies to arrange things more justly.


Lesson Five: Resisting “Expert” Mystification

Experts, including intellectuals and medical professionals, are human and thus prone to error. Some of the theories they create persist not because they are good, but because they are impervious to evidence and critique. We should pay attention whenever it is claimed that theories about women’s nature or role in society are “too complex” for ordinary women to understand, or when such theories appear to be immune to counterexamples.

One such attempt at “expert” mystification is the insistence by some (not all) trans rights activists and theorists that biological sex doesn’t exist—that male and female are social constructions at best, or meaningless and incoherent concepts at worst. If you think that male and female are useful, sensible categories, it’s only because the topic is far more complex than you can understand (with your primary school biology, lol). Or so they say. This is mystification. In fact, the problem is not a scientific one but a conceptual one: namely how to categorise biological sex given that a few people per thousand are not easily categorisable as male or female due to mixed or ambiguous physical features. There could be more than one conceptual approach to this fact, but entirely discarding the categories of male and female is neither necessary nor sensible, since they have serious explanatory and predictive power. In fact, disappearing sex is a profoundly anti-feminist move, since it renders us unable to describe, analyse or address sex-based injustice and disadvantage. In any case, it’s important to note the mystification tactic, namely the insistence by some activists that everyone who disagrees with them is ignorant or stupid, and that the truth is more complex than we can understand.

And Finally

If we’re going to talk about good lives, we should look at how this affects all women, not just middle class and wealthy ones. Friedan decided that our wellbeing hinges on our identity, which revolves around meaningful work. If this even approaches the truth, then one of the most important tasks for feminism is to fight for economic equality and protections for workers in order to raise up all women. Choice and satisfaction in one’s career are simply incompatible with dire financial insecurity, and with the vastly unequal bargaining power that currently exists between many employees and employers. This is something Friedan doesn’t talk about in her book—her focus is on the middle class women and the myth that trapped them unhappily in the home. Nonetheless, I feel this conclusion springs inexorably from my reading of her work.

The happy housewife is a stereotype of the past, but that doesn’t mean modern myths of femininity don’t shape our lives today. It’s harder to recognise a cultural myth from inside the culture that produces it. But Friedan has given us some useful clues about where to look. She has also given us an important lesson about what can happen if we fail to pass on our feminist values to younger women.

So squint suspiciously at the varieties of femininity your culture sells you, and engage the youth!

  1. Friedan, Betty. 2010. The Feminine Mystique. Modern Classics. London: Penguin.

  2. Dines, Gail. 2019. “The Battle Lines between Radfems and (Neo) Libfems around Porn and ‘Sex Work.’” Presented at the The Radical Feminist Theory Conference, London.

  3. Lundberg, Ferdinand, and Marynia Farnham. 1947. Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. pp142 ff

  4. Jones, Ernest. 1953. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 1. New York. pp110 ff

  5. Margaret Mead wrote a lot of material and I believe she developed more complex views on sex and gender than are addressed in The Feminine Mystique.

  6. Maslow, Abraham H. 'Some Basic Proposition of Holistic-Dynamic Psychology,' an unpublished paper, Brandeis University.