Women's Rights - A Chronicle of Reform

In this chapter of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan denounces a fundamental notion of the mystique: The role for women in the home is equal to the role of men in society. To further explain this notion, she makes use of several different rhetorical devices such as antithesis, when she establishes a connection between the dreadful physical and mental health of full time housewives plus men working on assembly lines, and she does so in order to accentuate the hidden problems of “alcoholism, obesity, chronic fatigue, and lack of interest in sex” due to preconceived ideas about gender roles. Moreover, she makes use of logos, when she provides her readers with statistics about how “Women constituted nearly half of the professional workforce;

In her report, Veronica Loveday writes about Women’s Rights Movement, during World War two, and many restrictions women faced. Women’s rights movement in the U.S. begun in the 1960s as a reaction to the decades of unfair social and civil inequities faced by women. Over the next thirty years, feminists campaigned for equality, such as equal pay, equal work , and abortion rights. Women finally gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment to the constitution in 1920.

In 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 broke new ground by seeking the idea of women discovering personal fulfillment away from their original roles. She ponders on the idea of the Feminine Mystique as the cause for the majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house, 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.

There is a cliché quote that people say, “Beauty is in the eye of beholder.” But in the essay “The Ugly Truth About Beauty” (1998) Dave Barry argues about how women who spend countless hours on their so called “beauty” whereas men seem not to care. Barry uses juxtaposition and exaggeration to poke fun at men and women behavior and shed light on the harm that the beauty industry is doing. When Barry argues his point of his essay he addresses both genders, but more specifically teenage to middle age men and women, but he writes about it in a humorous and light-hearted manner.

Women have always been fighting for their rights for voting, the right to have an abortion, equal pay as men, being able to joined the armed forces just to name a few. The most notable women’s rights movement was headed in Seneca Falls, New York. The movement came to be known as the Seneca Falls convention and it was lead by women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton during July 19th and 20th in 1848. Stanton created this convention in New York because of a visit from Lucretia Mott from Boston. Mott was a Quaker who was an excellent public speaker, abolitionist and social reformer. She was a proponent of women’s rights. The meeting lasted for only two days and was compiled of six sessions, which included lectures on law, humorous

Strong-willed, intelligent, and motivated are only some of the words we can use to describe Betty Friedan. Credited as being the mother of the second wave of feminism, Friedan was an influential women’s right activist during the twentieth century but her legacy has continued to strive well into the twenty-first century. Friedan is the author of a variety of books including The Feminine Mystique, which became a phenomenon because of its powerful message to women for self-exploration outside their traditional roles. This book helped to define Friedan’s role in the fight for women empowerment and equality. It evoked emotions in many women who agreed that they did not want to fulfil traditional roles, creating an atmosphere of change. She was also the cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), serving as its first president and also helped to create the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and the National Women’s Political Caucus. With these organizations, Friedan became the face of the women’s movement and encouraged women to take a stand against the pathological idealization of women by creating a sense of community

Betty Friedan believed that women should feel and be treated equal to men. Friedan fought for women to embody their power and worth. She was an activist for the women’s rights movement and a founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Her book, The Feminine Mystique, connected with her readers by illustrating the standards that women were put under for decades. In the 60’s, women were viewed as nothing but maids and child-bearers. Many women were hesitant to take a stand for this taboo subject; their own rights. Friedan took initiative when everyone else was afraid to. Betty Friedan’s contribution clearly advanced the progression of women’s equality. She accomplished this by writing her famous book, giving a debatable speech, and founding the National Organization for Women.

Betty Friedan advanced the Women’s Rights Movement in many ways. One of them being the publishing of the Feminine Mystique. The Feminine Mystique vented

The year 1776 ignited the colonial rebellion from Great Britain, with colonists from the newly formed United States demanding their individual and colony’s rights. They advocated for representation, their individual rights, and the issue of sovereignty. With the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, individual rights overall were thought to be “protected” in the newly liberated Unites States. Yet the continued limiting of women’s rights, treatment of the mentally handicapped and emancipated slaves, the individual liberties colonists believed they would gain from Britain was only for certain individuals, not all. The colonists believed that they would advance their individual rights and freedoms with their independence from Britain; though the reality was that the struggles of individual liberties continued throughout the next 100 years in different classes of citizens despite their gaining of independence from Britain.

The Feminine Mystique is a first person narrative about the struggles of feminism. It highlights the problems of women in the 1950s to the 1960s and challenges gender roles. The book includes several first person interviews and discusses the Second Wave of feminism. It introduces the idea of the sexulization of women being used in consumerism and the lack of sexual education in school during the time. The Feminine Mystique is a useful resource because it is considered the groundbreaking book about feminism and lists issues that women have had to deal with from the 1960s until now. The book could be used to argue the struggles that women have faced and continue to face.

In the book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan brings attention to what she calls the feminine mystique, or “the problem that has no name”. Through the use of anecdotal narratives, her own personal experiences as a journalist, editor, mother, and the interviews of many women from different backgrounds in order to unveil the truth about the women of the 1950’s. The problem which sparked the second wave of feminism in the United States is one that focuses on the inequality between men and women and the undervaluing of women in both the social and private spheres. The women of the time gave up pursuing their passions, such as getting an education or careers in science or business in order to fit the image of the stereotypical stay-at-home mom whose main goal in life is to raise her children while providing a safe and comforting home for her husband. The Feminine Mystique, as she called it, was the idea of widespread unhappiness of women, despite the preconceived notion that women were happiest when they have a family. Throughout her work, she dives into many of the problems associated with the feminine mystique and builds a powerful concept of what would eventually be labeled feminism.

Betty Friedan explores the troubles that women have faced and the reason behind these troubles in The Feminine Mystique. She defines the “feminine mystique” as a limitation set on women’s femininity across America in the 1950s and early 1960s. She explains how she believes it came to be so widely upheld due to magazines written by men and how it has had an effect on women in a negative way. According to Friedan, due to the feminine mystique developed from magazine stories, society forces women to abandon any career aspirations in order to devote their lives to being housewives and mothers, as well as be completely fulfilled with this life path.

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published February 19, 1963, a book that some have said single-handedly started the feminist movement of the 1960’s through the 1980’s. The book’s core message was that women were letting society take away their identity and in the process, were becoming more and more unhappy with their lives, even as they lived out the “ideal” life. As Friedan said, “Our culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role.” (pg. 133) The Feminine Mystique, while well-written and correct in many situations, not all people felt that is was always correct.

Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” was prompted by the social norms and attitudes toward women and traditional gender roles during the 1950’s. Friedan had observed a general sense of dissatisfaction in her own life as a homemaker but also in lives of those around her inspiring her to conduct an initial survey of 200 post war graduates from Smith College, A women’s only liberal arts university. Questioning social order and gender roles during this era was seen as a hallmark of psychological disturbances or mental illness. The stigma of expressing doubts regarding the ways of society are what led to Friedan’s Smith Survey being rejected by publishers who had previously published her other work. An editor of Redbook was quoted saying that Friedan herself was “off her rocker…” and that “only the most neurotic of housewives could identify.” This type of reception and the refusal of magazines and journals to publish her finding led to her decision to extend the project and publish her work as a book instead.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is widely credited as sparking the second-wave of feminism. The book became a manifesto for the larger body of the women’s movement during the 1960-70s and Friedan became ‘the mother of feminism’ (Lecture). The Feminine Mystique began with a noble goal, to define and analyze ‘the problem with no name’ and ‘the feminine mystique’ that plagues all American women. Friedan saw the need for women to “break through the feminine mystique to their own political and economic participation and empowerment in the mainstream of society” (Friedan 26). Yet Friedan’s arguments regarding work and fulfillment speak solely to the experience of educated middle-class white women. By utilizing