From Truth Out: http://truth-out.org/news/item/14514-betty-friedans-the-feminine-mystique-50-years-later
By Peter Dreier
Sunday, 17 February 2013
The Feminine Mystique – published on February 19, 1963 -”catalyzed the modern feminist movement, helped forever change Americans’ attitudes about women’s role in society and catapulted its author into becoming an influential and controversial public figure.”
Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, identified the “problem that has no name” – which feminists later labeled “sexism.” Three years after its publication – 50 years ago this month – Friedan was instrumental in organizing the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other key groups that helped build the movement for women’s equality.
The Feminine Mystique was not only a best-selling book, but also a manifesto for change.
Most Americans now accept as normal the once-radical ideas that Friedan and others espoused. Today, most Americans, including men, believe that women should earn the same pay as men if they do the same job. Corporations, law firms, the media, universities, advertising, the military, sports and other core institutions can no longer exercise blatant sex discrimination without facing scrutiny and the risk of protest and lawsuits. The Obama administration just lifted the ban on women in combat. Women are now running corporations, newspapers and TV stations, universities and major labor unions. In 1960, only about six percent of medical students were women. Today women comprise about half of all medical students and have a stronger foothold in other formerly all-male professions and occupations. More men in couples share housework and child rearing than was the case two or three decades ago. Giving girls an equal opportunity to play competitive sports is now taken for granted. Employers now recognize the reality of sexual harassment, which did not even have a name until the 1970s. The right to have an abortion, legalized in the US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, is still under attack but remains the law. In 1963, there were few college courses or books on women’s history, literature or politics, and no women’s studies programs.
When The Feminine Mystique was published, men’s turnout at the polls exceeded that of women by five percent. Since 1980, women have consistently voted at higher rates than men, according to the Center on American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. The number of women elected to office at every level of government has spiraled. In 1963, there were two women in the US Senate and only 12 women in the House of Representatives. Today, 20 women serve in the Senate and 77 serve in the House. Similar shifts have occurred at the local and state levels. Although a rise in women’s turnout has spurred these gains, men are now more willing to vote for women candidates than ever before.
Continue reading at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/14514-betty-friedans-the-feminine-mystique-50-years-later
