The Feminine Mystique

1. How did postwar prosperity, the atomic bond, and the Cold War effect the American family in the 1950s? What was Rosie the Riveter's legacy in postwar America?
2. According to Friedan, what created the feminine mystique? Define the following terms:
   • The Problem that Has No Name
     
   • The Happy Housewife Heroine
     
   • The Crisis in Woman's Identity
     
   • The Mistaken Choice
     
   • The Sexual Sell
     
   What is Friedan's solution to the Feminine Mystique?
3. Are class, race, and ethnicity components of the feminine mystique? How, if at all, have feminism and women's liberation transcended the concerns of white middle-class women?
4. Is there a masculine mystique, and if so, how is it expressed?
5. How was feminism an expression of American society in the 1960s? In what ways was feminism radical? In what ways, if any, was feminism conservative? How do feminism and the American Indian movement compare as expressions of the desire for change in the 1960s?

Internet Resources

Biography of Betty Friedan

A brief biography provided by Encyclopedia Britannica at the Women in American History Site.

Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement

The digital images collected by Duke University address "various aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States, and focus specifically on the radical origins of this movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Items range from radical theoretical writings to humourous plays to the minutes of an actual grassroots group."

Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America

An article by Daniel Horowitz first published in The American Quarterly in 1996.

Votes for Women

Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921. A good resource for the background to first-stage feminism.

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