Betty Friedan: Women’s Work, Post WWII Liberalism, and the Origins of Women’s Liberation in the United States
Abstract
The article focuses on the work of the housewife of the suburban American middle-class during the height of the post-WWII period as presented and analyzed by Betty Friedan in her seminal book The Feminine Mystique (1963). I explore her descriptions of the homemaker who dedicates her work, energy, and indeed her adult life, to her husband, children, and home. Friedan’s study of the housewife’s domestic labor question was based on a blend of prewar Old Left Marxist views and the growing influence of the dominant anti-radical liberal ideology in the 1950s, as contemporary academics and social commentators articulated these views. The essay examines how Friedan’s social, psychological, and economic approach simultaneously subverted and validated the social sciences and the competing ideologies of the time. Crossing boundaries enabled Friedan to become a “transitional bridge figure” between generations, thus helping younger educated women to adopt career and work outside of the home and making them the foundations for the equal rights ideology of the women’s movement since the mid-1960s.Downloads
References
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