Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique
Friedan’s Chapter One and Two Karly Marin Sacramento State University Communication Studies Major Gender Ideology Introduction Women play a pivotal role in the growth and development of social, economic and political spheres. There are countable women in the history of the world who have made remarkable contributions to the various spheres. Their accounts are recorded in books, magazines and journals amongst others. The Feminine Mystique is one of the books that received a wide audience in the 1950s. Written by Betty Friedan, the book is highly associated with the revolutions that led to the women liberation movements. The chapter on the “Problem that has No Name,” explains the dilemma of women and the challenges they faced …show more content…
In addition, they formed the majority of the suburban housewives who were doing far much better compared to the working-class women of color. In her work, Friedan discriminates African-American women to a large extent even in the light that many of them formed the category of working-class women. She actually, entirely underscores their contributions to the economy at the time. The reason why she left them out of the book could be because they never participated in the roles that she deemed “fulfilling” or those that she advocated. While Friedan generalizes the idea that all women were struggling to achieve equality with men at the time, she fails to understand that there were others who were not under the broad “category of Feminine Mystique.” In fact, many African-American women and working class women did not share the perception that Friedan had. Majority of them did not view their families as a limiting factor towards political involvement and incompatibility with …show more content…
She believed that gay men were disrespectful and that they could not be respected in the society (Nardi & Schneider, 2013). At a particular instance, she described the spread of homosexuality in the United States as “murky smog”. Still in the research, the mistrust for gay people was drawn from unscientific ideas and methods of collecting data. For instance, the information that Alfred Kinsey, an author whose views concerning homosexuality are widely used in Friedan’s book, was collected from a prison facility. The fact that the facility had more men than women means that random sampling was not employed in collecting research (Nardi & Schneider,
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Betty Friedan's The Importance Of Work
1454 Words | 6 PagesThe National Organization for Women aimed to promote women 's ideas, eliminate discrimination, and protect the equal rights of women in all aspects of life. Friedan ignited the second wave of American feminism by writing The Feminine Mystique. Friedan 's audience would most likely be women who want their rights and are annoyed with the housewife role. In her article, "The Importance of Work," Friedan uses several means of persuasion and different types of rhetorical strategies to describe the change in human identity. Friedan uses logos, the ability to convince her audience by logic and reasoning, throughout her article to describe facts that took place in 1963.
Betty Friedan's The Importance Of Work By Betty Friedan
1088 Words | 5 PagesIn her essay, “The Importance of Work,” from The Feminine Mystique published in 1963, Betty Friedan confronts American women’s search for identity. Throughout the novel, Betty Friedan breaks new ground, concocting the idea that women can discover personal fulfillment by straying away from their original roles. Friedan ponders on the idea that The Feminine Mystique is the cause for a vast majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house; therefore, restricting them from discovering who they are as women. Friedan’s novel is well known for creating a different kind of feminism and rousing various women across the nation.
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94 Words | 1 PagesAfter WWII, women were expected to go back to their traditional roles In reality, many women took jobs outside the home to help pay bills and make a living. Economic boom = more workers Women were paid lower and limited to jobs such as teachers, nurses or secretary In 1962, Betty Friedan 's book The Feminine Mystique captured the frustration and despair of a generation of college-educated housewives who felt trapped and unfulfilled. While Friedan 's writing largely spoke to an audience of educated women, her work had sparked the "second wave" of the feminist movement.
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1776 Words | 8 PagesThe most glaring fault is that Friedan only focuses on middle class, educated women who are housewives, but ignores the struggles of other women in this category. Take colored women, for example. In The Feminine Mystique, there is barely any mention of colored women. Considering this book was written during the raucous time of the civil rights movement, how could Friedan neglect to mention a whole segment of the women population who were even under more duress than the subjects of The Feminine Mystique? At a time when colored women had even marginally significantly less rights, significantly less opportunities, and significantly less chance to reach self-fulfillment, it is an injustice that Friedan does not give them a voice in The Feminine
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