Friedan Research Articles

Gender stereotypes in Lola Shoneyin’s the secret lives of baba Segi’s wives

This research focuses on gender stereotypes in selected African literary text. The way in which some African writers view gender inequalities and stereotypes in their characters is explored. We will also be able to see who is involved and affected by these gender inequalities and how. What determines beliefs about the ability and appropriate role of women? An overwhelming majority of men and women born early in the 20th century thought women should not work; a majority now believes that work is appropriate for both genders. Betty Friedan (1963) postulated that beliefs about gender were formed by consumer goods producers, but a simple model suggests that such firms would only have the incentive to supply error, when mass persuasion is cheap, when their products complement women’s time in the household, and when individual producers have significant market power (1). Such conditions seem unlikely to be universal, or even common, but gender stereotypes have a long history. To explain that history, we turn to a second model where parents perpetuate beliefs out of a desire to encourage the production of grandchildren. Undersupply of female education will encourage daughters’ fertility, directly by reducing the opportunity cost of their time and indirectly by leading daughters to believe that they are less capable. Children will be particularly susceptible to persuasion if they overestimate their parents’ altruism toward themselves. The supply of persuasion will diminish if women work before childbearing, which may explain why gender-related beliefs changed radically among generations born in the 1940s.

Feminine Mystique Experienced by Ana Concion in Angie Cruz’s Dominicana

Women are often deprived of their rights based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics. Betty Friedan thinks patriarchal culture makes women too passive, do not think independently, and do not work for themselves. In addition, women are often trapped in feminine mystique, meaning that they are only fixated on the demands of serving their husbands and doing domestic chores. The novel Dominicana by Angie Cruz talks about Ana (the main female character) trapped in a feminine mystique. That novel is the primary source of data in this study. The aims are to find out how feminine mystique is presented in the novel and explain Ana's efforts to get out of these issues. The researcher uses a feminist literary criticism as an approach and applies Betty Friedan's feminine mystique theory. Thus, the results of this study indicate that Ana did not get her rights as a woman and only did domestic chores without having access to public sphere. Therefore, she made various efforts, such as against her husband, finding a part-time job, joining an English class, and revealing her husband's affair. However, the researcher only focuses on the main female character, to discuss the Feminine Mystique that she experiences and the resistance she does. In future research, the researcher hopes that many will analyze this novel as an object of study in literary criticism. Many literary criticism theories and approaches can be used to analyze this novel, such as psychoanalysis, historicism, structuralism, and sociology of literature. Future researchers can also examine this novel with the same approach by choosing different theoretical references.

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

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.

Book Review: Women who invented the sixties: Ella Baker, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Betty Friedan by Golin, S.

Book Review: <i>Women who invented the sixties: Ella Baker, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Betty Friedan</i> by Golin, S.

Examining Masculinities and Femininity in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire

Examining A Streetcar Named Desire through the lens of Gender and Masculinity Studies is an academically enriching and intriguing pursuit. The play, first performed on Broadway in 1947, continues to captivate with its portrayal of the characters of Stanley and Blanche. Stanley’s aggressive masculinity is pitted against the frailty of Blanche, leading to her breakdown and her ultimate escape into the unreal world of fantasy. This study aims to identify different types of masculinities; from Allan Grey’s closeted identity to Stanley Kowalsky's toxic masculinity, and how each affects Blanche Du Bois. It is intriguing to explore whether her distraught emotional state is entirely due to Stanley’s bestial toxicity or whether she is also a victim of femininity which is synonymous with frailty, beauty, and obsession with eternal youth. R.W. Connell’s Masculinities (1995,2005), and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) have been used as a framework to evaluate the male and female characters in the play.

Special section editorial Hitting home: representations of the domestic milieu in feminist art

The politics of the home was often a focus in second-wave feminist art in the West. Influenced by Betty Friedan's The feminist mystique (1963), which challenged the notion that women were content to be wives, mothers, and homemakers, artists often represented the domestic milieu as a space of oppression. Friedan's ideas would, however, be challenged by bell hooks, who indicated that such perceptions assumed a woman who was middle-class and white. As hooks observed in Feminist theory: from margin to center (1984:2), Friedan 'did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife'. It should also be noted that Friedan's views were shaped by a US-specific context and that the politics of home, domesticity, marriage, or parenthood may be perceived very differently in geographies outside the United States or the West, more generally, including South Africa.

The Portrayal of Women’s Power Ambivalence: in Literature- to- Film Adaptation of Enola Holmes

The pursuit of dreams by women often results in a complex state of ambivalence, as they contend with societal, familial, and personal obstacles. This underscores the need for a new cultural narrative that reconciles the strengths and weaknesses of women. Our research focuses on examining the portrayal of woman's power in the novel and film Enola Holmes. Utilizing a qualitative approach and Betty Friedan's liberal feminism as a framework, we explore the multifaceted nature of female empowerment as represented by the character Enola Holmes. Our findings reveal that Enola's aspiration to become a detective symbolizes female empowerment but is marked by ambivalence. A form of ambivalence can be seen when Enola ends up in boarding school, falls in love with a man, gets help from male friend, gets a culture shock, and uses the name “Holmes”; Eudoria’s absence after her enthusiastic efforts of teaching Enola and making a plan for reform bill with her feminist movement; Dowager's plan to kill Tewkesbury is defeated by Enola Holmes and Tewkesbury; women oppressing women through the character Enola Holmes fights Edith and Enola Holmes argues Miss Harrison. Therefore, these complexities suggest a paradox: efforts to challenge patriarchal norms can inadvertently reinforce the culture they seek to change. In conclusion, our study highlights the nuanced nature of female empowerment in "Enola Holmes," offering insights into the intricate interplay between women's agency and societal norms in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

The Female Man ve The Left Hand of Darkness Romanlarında İkinci Dalga Feminizmin Yansıması

Women science fiction writers of the 60s and 70s reflected second wave feminist ideologies in their fictional works. The distinctive narrative techniques of science fiction genre brought out various aspects of feminist ideas in different ways. Issues related to gender and sex were embedded in the elements of science fiction such as parallel universes, androgynies, intersex, mindreading, planets, aliens, and inventions. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), through these elements, raise questions about gender equality, body politics, ethics, and social constructions. These science fiction novels have themes that are closely related to the central texts debated among second wave feminists such as Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). Le Guin and Russ apply feminist theories to unconventional lives and societies, whose uniqueness or oddity helps readers think outside of the box. By presenting alternative societies, they unfold how male domination can cause sexual objectification and gender inequality, and anatomic differences in science fiction worlds creates an awareness concerning constructed gender roles. Moreover, the second wave feminists’ emphasis on sexual freedom, birth control, and marriage are illustrated through the multi-faceted outcomes of these multi-directional utopic and dystopic societies. This paper aims to bring together second wave feminist ideas and science fiction through an examination of two works, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Female Man, both of which present resisting interpretations of traditional gender issues. Unorthodox approaches to gender, the peculiar structure of the societies, and body politics will be analyzed through the narratives and elements of science fiction. Further-more, this paper will illustrate how these novels challenge conventional definitions of gender and sex in the light of second wave feminism.

Highlighting Ideas of Human Rights: A Review of American Intellectuals’ Classic Writings

This article intends to review the ideas of human rights appearing in several American intellectuals’ classic writings from the Puritan era up to the modern era. It is a descriptive qualitative writing whose focus is on a literature review. In so doing, close reading is applied as a method and interdisciplinary perspective as its framework It is found that the ideas of human rights have spread as a public issue from the Puritan era until the modern era when proposed by many intellectuals, i.e., Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, George Fitzhugh, Abraham Lincoln, Sarah Grimke, Louisa McCord, Margaret Fuller, Betty Friedan, William Lloyd Garrison, and so forth. In response to many inhumane social conditions in the United States, human rights ideas arose.The ideas certainly support the establishment of the United States as a country. Consequently, this fact indicates that human rights ideas have persisted in the veins of the American nation over time, preserving it as the most plural and multicultural one in which all entities are welcome and acknowledged.

PACKED LUNCH PHENOMENON FOR HUSBAND: NETIZENS' CONTESTATION ABOUT GENDER ROLES

Packed lunch for husbands was a viral thread on Twitter in 2020. The thread containing photos of food and the recipe went viral because of the many responses from netizens regarding packed lunch for husbands related to gender roles. This article questions how gender roles relate to packed lunch for husbands, which netizens disputed in this thread. This research uses descriptive analysis method. By collecting primary data in the form of phrases, words, sentences contained in the @rainydecember thread along with citizen comments. After the data was collected, it was analyzed using Betty Friedan's feminine mystique perspective, then described. The results showed that the owner of the thread was shackled to the mystical feminine who consciously or not helped to spread and perpetuate it by making packed lunch for her husband. The thread then received mixed responses, netizens who widely supported the thread indicated that they were constructed of a patriarchal ideology and considered the ideal woman who was good at taking care of the household as a mystical feminine. As for those who are against these threads, they have the potential to misogyny and build stereotypes on women, especially aimed at the thread owner

Between housewifery and emancipation in My Lecturer My Husband novel by Gitlicious

This study aims to examine the actualization of women in the novel My Lecturer My Husband by Gitlicious by relying on the formulation put forward by Betty Friedan. The depiction of the minimal role of women in literary production means that female characters in literary works are often portrayed as biased and one-sided. Therefore, it is essential to discuss women's experiences through women authors' works because they have direct experience in describing women's lives. This research is a type of qualitative descriptive research that uses documentation techniques and literature studies as a data collection method. Meanwhile, the data analysis technique used was interactive, including data reduction techniques, presentation, and verification. This study shows that women experience an identity crisis because they often surrender to the situation. Circumstances that require Inggit's character to be at a certain point so that she feels have to return to their nature.

On Leggings and Lemongrass Shots: How Momfluencing Perpetuates the Feminine Mystique

n this paper, I situate the Instagram ‘momfluencing’ industry within Betty Friedan’s framework of the feminine mystique, specifically the sexual sell. The sexual sell is the concept of targeting housewives for profit, promising identity and fulfilment in exchange for product purchase. I bring this into conversation with the momfluencing industry by integrating Friedan’s research on the impact of 1950s women’s magazines with modern research on the impact of social media advertisements (specifically through influencers) on women. Then, I apply my comparative work to some of the most popular momfluencers. I claim that while advertisements today do not appeal so explicitly to a woman’s rightful place in the home, the sexual sell has not been eradicated—it has mutated. What makes the momfluencer different (and more dangerous) than the straightforward magazines of the 1950s is her marketing approach: she is not just selling products. Rather, she brands herself and she is the product. Furthermore, I illustrate how momfluencing has armed and mobilized the sexual sell by exploiting the existing identity crises in women. Their lack of fulfilment is what feeds, and has always fed, the feminine mystique. I then state that because the momfluencer can only succeed at the financial and emotional expense of other women, the industry is ultimately destructive. While the momfluencing industry has the potential to be a powerful feminist play with its opportunities for women entrepreneurs, its rampant success must be interrogated: Why is the flawless housewife who ‘has it all’ still the picture of achievement for women? This leads to my conclusion that despite isolated empowerment to the momfluencer herself, the success of her industry limits the role of women everywhere because it squanders women’s identities while capping their potentials at housewifery, impeding progress that could be made otherwise. By showcasing unachievable domestic fantasies and capitalising on women’s lack of fulfilment, the momfluencing industry perpetuates Friedan’s feminine mystique.

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt and the Double Time of Motherhood

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt and the Double Time of Motherhood

WOMAN'S FIGHT FOR EMANCIPATION AS REFLECTED IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S JANE EYRE

This study aims to analyze woman's fight for emancipation in Jane Eyre novel by Charlotte Bronte, a novel written in the Victorian era and first published in 1847. Woman emancipation refers to woman's struggle to obtain rights that should be given in order for her potential to develop and function fully in certain aspects of life. In this study, the writers use qualitative research because the data are gathered in the form of words rather than numbers. The mimetic approach also employs in order to seek woman’s fight for a better life. There are two kinds of sources namely primary and secondary sources. The primary source is the novel itself whereas the secondary sources are from books and internet references. The result of the analysis shows Jane Eyre’s fight for woman emancipation, she has authority and freedom as a human being who is fully entitled to herself, and is able to decide the best path for herself. By using the feminism theory of Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, it can be concluded that Jane Eyre is able to show her ability and become a female character who can be an excellent role model in the fight for emancipation.

From When Abortion Was a Crime to Abortion Is a Crime.

From When Abortion Was a Crime to Abortion Is a Crime Leslie J. Reagan (bio) I began researching the history of abortion in the United States when I was in Judy Leavitt’s Women and Health class at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Assigned a research paper, I suggested the 1960s abortion legalization movement. “That’s too recent,” Judy replied; she advised me to instead examine the medical literature for discussions of abortion. I went to the UW’s incredible medical library, where I used the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General’s Office to identify journal articles about abortion and then tracked them down in dozens of regional and specialist medical journals held by the library.1 In this first-year graduate seminar paper, I discovered the persistent conversation among doctors about abortion and their own practices and techniques of performing what they called “therapeutic abortion”—induced when the physician believed that pregnancy threatened the life or health of the woman. The medical literature included patient case studies, collective data, the introduction of new instruments, and discussion about when a therapeutic abortion was required. At one point I switched to colonial history, but one sleepless night of tossing and turning told me that I was not done researching abortion. I made it my dissertation topic. The threat to the legality of abortion posed by Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980, while I was a college student, had turned me into an activist, so the topic mattered to me. [End Page 11] But equally important, no one had investigated the hundred years during which abortion from conception on had been criminalized across the nation. What happened to women when early abortion was criminalized? What role did the medical profession play in the new legal landscape? How did the state enforce the new laws?2 I have been asked what it’s like to do research on a “controversial” topic. I don’t know that I ever thought much about whether focusing on abortion was controversial or dangerous. My advisors, Judy Leavitt and Linda Gordon, supported the project. And as an activist before becoming a graduate student, I had already managed my fears of public speaking; my anxieties focused more on writing. The one person who expressed opposition to this dissertation topic, renowned historian Gerda Lerner, was trying to protect me and other students of hers interested in studying sexuality from jeopardizing their future careers; the profession was far more conservative at that time, and many historians were suspicious and disrespectful of topics they considered trivial or not “real history.” She feared that the new field of women’s history and the UW Women’s History Program that she founded could be associated with sexuality and sexual nonconformity at a time when women’s history was already widely marginalized. Her anxiety resembled feminist Betty Friedan’s fear that the “purple menace”—i.e., lesbianism—would hurt the new feminist movement and her new organization, the National Organization for Women (NOW). But Gerda’s fears arose both from her knowledge of the male-dominated historical profession and from her experience as a Jew and a leftist in a rapidly Nazifying Austria: as a student in Vienna, after the 1938 Anschluss, she had been active in the student anti-Nazi resistance and was imprisoned for six weeks until she managed to escape to the United States. A decade later she had seen how the 1950s McCarthyist Red Scare destroyed many people’s careers (including her husband’s).3 But Gerda was no coward: despite her disapproval of sex-related topics, when I told her of my plan to pursue the history of abortion, she soon returned to her role as a historian and mentor, suggesting archives and sources. Though Gerda’s response unnerved me, I plunged ahead—with the support of my advisors Judy Leavitt and [End Page 12] Linda Gordon4 and the extraordinary group of women’s history graduate students at the University of Wisconsin. I was fortunate, too, to find support from the wider historical profession. Senior scholars whom I knew only as books, like Jim Mohr, Joan Brumberg, Allan Brandt, and Nancy Tomes...

Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work

Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work

The Friedan mystique: feminist revolution and Betty Friedan's Jewish identity

ABSTRACT Betty Friedan is often considered one of the foremothers of the women's liberation movement in the mid-twentieth century; however, more recently, critics have addressed her centering of white, middle-class women, especially in The Feminine Mystique. This brief essay examines Freidan's Jewish identity in conjunction with her experiences of anti-Semitism as a way of rethinking why Friedan centered white, middle-class women. I look specifically at Friedan's experiences growing up in an immigrant family that prioritized assimilation into American culture. With this background in mind, I address how Friedan became an image maker in the media despite her Jewish identity. The pressure to assimilate into Christian, white, middle-class norms informed her understanding of mainstream audiences as well as shaped the goals of her feminism.

Interrogating the Myths of Education: Dorothy Bryant'sElla Price's JournalandMiss Giardino

Interrogating the Myths of Education: Dorothy Bryant's<i>Ella Price's Journal</i>and<i>Miss Giardino</i>

“She is Present in Offstage, Absent in Mainstream”- Unheard Voices of Women in Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari

This work seeks to constitute the unexplored area in Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbari, which is the lack of representation and absent female voices in the novel, by looking at the liminality of their participation in the larger rubric of politics, education and economics etc. The research examines the ‘subjectivity and positioning of women’, which is in contrast to the delineation of the male voices in the novel. The work diverges from the current readings of the text, which focuses on the satirical aspect of the novel. The paper accentuates on the autonomy of women and their indulgence in the role play of the novel by locating them within the corpus of Anchalik Literature. The paper is doing textual analysis by aid of feminist reading of the novel. The task is accomplished, keeping in mind the Feminist Mystique theory of Betty Friedan and Patricia Collins and Dorothy Smith’s Feminist Standpoint Theory. The main findings of the research demonstrate the urgency of issue where feminine ideals of women are completely out of the picture. The larger concern of this paper not only focuses on the objectivity of women but also their subjectivity. As a result, the research shifts the lens of looking at it from satirical framework to inherent gender struggles in the narrative.

BREAKING DOWN THE CONCEPT OF FEMININE MYSTIQUE IN ESTI KINASIH’S CEWEK!!!

Indonesian literature has various experiences of development based on the dynamics of literary thought in their work. One of the literary works that are currently developing is popular literature. The study of popular literature is an interesting study to do. Research on popular literary works is also rarely done by academics. The novel with the title CEWEK!!!, is one of the popular literary works that the researcher examines using Betty Friedan's mystical feminine theory approach. The study is based on the existence of construction that forces women to fulfill their femininity. Breaking of the mystic feminine construction is studied in more depth descriptively through the text sources contained in the novel. The results of the study show that there is an effort to break the mystical feminine construction that has developed in society through three female figures, Langen, Febi, and Fani. The female characters with their awareness have reconstructed the mystical feminine concept to show that women are also superior in society. Keywords: Popular Literature, mystic feminine, novels