Betty Friedan and the “Problem that has no name”
The 1950s and 1960s were a strange time for white women in the United States of America.
During the Second World War, society drastically inverted itself. It asked the same women whom they had confined to the roles of housewife and mother to come out into industrial space that had till then only been the men’s sphere. After all, it was a deserted space now because the men were in the battlefields. However, capitalism had to survive so it adapted itself by relying on the same women whom it had conveniently pushed inside the house to provide sustenance for its real workers — the women’s husbands, the men. Pictures of Rosie the Riveteer were everywhere as for the first time, women felt that they could do just what men did and more! Their husbands were out fighting the war and saving their country, they were saving the country too. It almost reached a point till the entire idea of femininity was changed into something revolutionary — but it did not.
The war ended and the men came back. It was almost like women never occupied the public sphere as men comfortably took up the jobs they had left behind. The women had no choice but to go back to their homes and their kitchens, looking after their husbands and children. They were still being educated, some even went out and looked for gainful employment. Most of them however got married young and made the four walls of their homes the only space that they could call theirs — even if partly so.
It is during such a time that Betty Friedan conducted a survey of her former classmates in the Smith College in 1957. Quite surprisingly, she found that most of her former classmates were unhappy with their lives as housewives. This problem that caused the unhappiness was something nobody could name or define specifically, intrigued her to the point she began a thorough survey of urban housewives as well as a study of psychology and media. Thus began Friedan’s tryst with the “Problem that had no name”.
Betty herself was a politically active student in her college and even a part of leftist and labor union activities. Even after her marriage, she was worked for United Electrical Workers’ UE News but was soon fired because she was pregnant with her second child. It has been hard to analyze if this firing felt unfair to Betty or if she protested against it, but she did take it in stride and start writing freelance for magazines like the Cosmopolitan.
When Betty first wrote an article about the “Problem that had no name” focusing on the urban homemakers in the industrial setting — she received a passionate response from many other housewives across USA. This prompted her to go ahead and research deeply into the education of these women, their subsequent experiences and how satisfied they were with life currently. She found out that most of these women felt stifled in their daily lives — they made their beds, sent their husbands to their office, sent their children to school, cooked and shopped — and that is where they ended. Several homemakers spoke about how unsatisfied they felt with their life which seemed to have no meaning of its own beyond the secondary meaning given to it by their husbands and children. More often than not, these same women left their education early to get married and give birth to children. They also often helped their husbands finish their education with their own income. In the end, if the marriage ended in a divorce — they would be left in a difficult situation where it was impossible for a woman nearing 50 to find employment without any of the skills required.
The book that followed, which she called ‘The Feminine Mystique’ is often argued to be the harbinger of the Second Wave of Feminism in USA. With her academic background in Psychology, Betty dismantled Freud’s ‘Penis Envy’ theory in this book. More importantly, this book challenged the structural sexism and misogyny that was experienced by women in the country. It asserted that women could take up the same spaces as men could and work just the same and deserved equal pay for equal work — an assertion that continued to inspire women for years after that and even now. She spoke about expanding women’s rights to education, participation in politics as well as social movements without the pressure to be confined back to their homes as a married housewife.
For the first time, someone based women’s rights in “the basic human need to grow, man’s will to be all that is in him to be.” She did not view women’s fate tied ultimately to matrimony but as a singular individual capable of doing what she wished to do without societal pressure and restrictions. The book primarily unified women all across the country in realizing that the dissatisfaction they felt in their lives was real and something they shared with countless other housewives. This led to them attending “consciousness-raising sessions” as well as lobbying to remove oppressive laws that restricted women’s participation in the workforce.
All of this was a huge challenge to the entire idea of ‘Feminine Mystique’ that was collectively generated and marketed by the patriarchal state and society through their mouthpiece — the media and advertisements. Friedan showed how majority of the women’s magazines at that time were edited by men which created the duality of a happy housewife or an unhappy careerist. Through subtle ideological hegemony, women who consumed these magazines were convinced that they should find ultimate happiness in caring for their family. They would be fulfilled naturally by tending to their home and looking after their family. By showing the career-oriented woman to be an unhappy woman, it was pushed down these women’s throats that the only way to be happy was to be feminine and by doing feminine duties.
Friedan categorically questioned the existing women’s educational system which had long-lasting consequences on shaping their lives in the future. She argued how the educational system did not equip women with skills that would gain them employment. Moreover, it never instilled the attitude that women could work as well rather only focusing on making them ideal housewives.
This was a huge break from the First Wave of Feminism in the United States of America as the early feminists and suffragettes asked for women to be an essential component of society. Friedan asked for their emancipation from the very oppressive fabric of society that did not allow them to realize their potential beyond their body — of giving birth to children. The book came as a fierce criticism at a time when USA was actively trying to promote the image of a “happy family” to be ideal during the Cold War with the man being the breadwinner and the women being the ones who made the bread at home.
Friedan’s work found many compatriots who shared the same problems of dissatisfaction she wrote about it. However, it also drew attacks from a large majority of housewives who felt their role and work as a homemaker was insulted and disrespected. These housewives enthusiastically argued that they did feel naturally fulfilled in their lives without having to resort to going out for employment. This clash would later be emphasized during the debate about ‘Equal Rights Amendment’.
Like most of Second Wave feminist theory, Betty’s work was also devoid of any consciousness on race, class and sexuality. Her work focused on and was restricted to a section of white homemakers only. The book as well as many of Friedan’s own personal opinions were criticized slowly during the 1980s and onward. However, one cannot deny the fact that she was probably the first one to ask important questions for women during that time. Questions that women themselves did not know how to articulate but felt deeply while they went about their daily, mundane life. Questions like, “Is this all?”
The article is written by Sukanya Bhattacharya, a third-year undergraduate student of Political Science at Presidency University.
