A well-written cry from the heart? I’ve read The Feminine Mystique. The degree of anger and bitterness behind Friedan’s screed came through clearly. To her, housewives were children in adult bodies, little princesses kept from fully maturing. She was miserable in her own life, but instead of getting help, she needed to smear others.
“...women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps...they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
What was disturbing about all the anger and hatred of their country coming from the sixties feminists was their whining about not having the same career opportunities as males.
In many cases that was true...many males were not ready to accept women as equal competitors in the marketplace.
But at the time events were changing rapidly. Since the end of WWII many young women were enrolling in institutions of higher learning. The numbers of females were approaching the numbers of males who were going on to colleges and universities.
What people forget is that before WWII only a very small percentage of males went to college. In 1940 only about half the population, male or female, finished high school.
After WWII the numbers of both sexes going on to IOHL boomed. It was inevitable that women would start entering fields previously mostly male or all male.
My point is that many leftists, especially angry, leftist feminists, fomented the idea that all American males had these wonderful jobs they loved while all women were relegated to their kitchens while being pregnant.
Until about fifty-sixty years ago a very large percentage of American males still worked hard, physical, many times dangerous jobs without great pay. Many of them still work those types of jobs.
When I started working in an office at a Fortune 500 company in my hometown in the early seventies there were quite a few women who had been working there for many years before I started. Many of them also had families and children. So the tale that all women were relegated to their homes before the seventies was false.
There was an inevitable lag time before women would start equaling men in numbers in certain professional positions, but they are now doing it.
However, few women wish to do the numerous dangerous, dirty jobs that still have to be done. If they want to do them, more power to them.
The idea of everybody having a great,wonderful career in whatever profession you choose is only a fairly recent one in the scheme of things for both sexes.