A Macat Analysis of The Feminine Mystique (The Macat Library)

Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique is possibly the best-selling of all the titles analysed in the Macat library, and arguably one of the most important.Yet it was the product of an apparently minor, meaningless assignment.Undertaking to approach former classmates who had attended Smith College with her, 10 years after their graduation, the high-achieving Friedan was astonished to discover that the survey she had undertaken for a magazine feature revealed a high proportion of her contemporaries were suffering from a malaise she had thought was unique to her: profound dissatisfaction at the ‘ideal’ lives they had been living as wives, mothers and homemakers.For Friedan, this discovery stimulated a remarkable burst of creative thinking, as she began to connect the elements of her own life together in new ways.The popular idea that men and women were equal, but different - that men found their greatest fulfilment through work, while women were most fulfilled in the home - stood rev