![]() ![]() That The Feminine Mystique was ranked theirty-seventh in a list of most important works of journalism by a panel of experts from New York University and seventh in a list of the ten most harmful books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the right-wing Human Events is a testament to its far-reaching and long-lasting influence. While the book and its legacy are often contested, Friedan’s seminal work The Feminine Mystique, which exposed the “problem with no name,” was widely read, and played a crucial role in giving expression to the suffering of millions of women held hostage by the 1950s myth of the domestic bliss of the American housewife. ![]() PUBLISHED ALMOST half a century ago, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is often credited with helping to launch the women’s liberation movement, providing the decisive spark to the long quiet but smoldering anger of women in the United States. We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: “I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.” -Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963 The women who suffer this problem have a hunger that food cannot fill…. For human suffering there is a reason perhaps the reason has not been found because the right questions have not been asked, or pressed far enough…. This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say. ![]() It is no longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women. ![]()
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