Some of these criticisms have persisted, but only because The Feminine Mystique has remained relevant from the moment of its publication through the present. Other critics pointed out that Friedan focused almost exclusively on straight, married, white, middle-class women, or charged that she was complicit in the demonization of stay-at-home mothers. After its release, much of the criticism essentially labeled Friedan a hysteric, while many women took offense at her suggestion that they were not fulfilled by their family and domestic duties. In addition to scholarly research, Friedan drew on first-hand accounts from housewives to explain how women were taught that homemaking and raising children was their sole purpose in life, how the education system and field of psychology made women who sought fulfillment elsewhere seem 'neurotic' and the myriad ways that women's magazines, advertisers and other elements of society reinforced women's secondary status.Įven before it was published, The Feminine Mystique was called 'overstated' and 'too obvious and feminine' by people within the company that published it. The book examines the many ways in which women were still oppressed by American society.

Her book, The Feminine Mystique, published on February 19, 1963, shook the ground beneath an American society rooted in a myth of pleasant domesticity and supported by the physical and emotional labor of women.

Though perhaps not the typical housewife-she had been involved in radical politics from a young age and had a degree in psychology from Smith College-Betty Friedan is often credited as the first to give voice to the suffering of millions of seemingly content American women.

Friedan the feminine mystique