![]() ![]() That began to change during World War II when the shortage of men created openings in traditionally male fields, and suddenly middle class mothers who chose to work outside the home were billed as “patriotic,” rather than “unnatural.” Although working class mothers, disproportionately women of color, had always found ways to earn money for their families, middle and upper class women had traditionally not worked for pay during the first half of the century. ![]() The late 1950s and early 1960s, when Friedan was researching and writing The Feminine Mystique, were a time of superficial stasis and underlying change in American women’s roles. But we can’t understand it, or its impact, without grasping the contradictions of the America in which it was created and Friedan’s own shortcomings with race, sexuality, and class. The book radically changed the mainstream conversation about the role of women, particularly married mothers, in the professional world. Written by Betty Friedan (née Bettye Goldstein), born 100 years ago today, The Feminine Mystique is a groundbreaking critique of 1950s womanhood. ![]() How does one read a book like The Feminine Mystique (1963) in 2021? For a historian of work and motherhood in the United States like me, there is scarcely a more influential text. ![]()
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