Moving forward while staying in the middle : Betty Friedan’s feminist narrative of women’s progress

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Betty Friedan’s political narrative of women’s progress, which I argue to be essential to her liberal feminist politics of gender equality and mainstreaming of women. Through a close reading of The Feminine Mystique, a cultural exposé and work of social movement literature, I draw critical attention to the narrative construction of women’s progress, which Friedan equated with women’s full integration into mainstream American society through productivity, individuality, and growth. At the same time, I note that such a narrative of women’s progress, though enthusiastically embraced by white middle-class suburban housewives in the 1960s, simultaneously marginalized women of colour, working-class women, and lesbians. Furthermore, Friedan’s narrative of women’s progress and mainstreaming, threatened by the rise of the conservative antifeminist backlash and the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1980s, was reconfigured into a conservative narrative of pro-family and postfeminism while celebrating white middle-class women’s ascendance to neoliberal capitalism. In lieu of a conclusion, I propose a cautionary tale of the rise of the neoliberal discourse of postfeminism to which Friedan’s narrative of women’s progress and mainstreaming has been conducive, if not integral.