‘The Feminine Mystique’, by Betty Friedan.
What it's about:
The classic 1963 feminist text on why women are not fulfilled by following the strict social code at the time - women should aim solely to become wives, mothers and home-makers.
What I learned:
Freud has played a pivotal role in shaping gender roles across several disciplines.
The often internalised gender stereotypes and standards were once overtly taught, ‘They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents’ (p. 5).
Housework can be expanded to fill as much or a little time as you give to it’s importance.
Lack of purpose and stimulation led women to suffer ‘housewife’s fatigue’ and many were reported as taking ‘tranquillisers like cough drops’ (p. 19).
There is evidence that mothers do not harm their children by having passions out with ‘the home’ - actually children can benefit from this.
Fave quotes:
‘Most women have not only a material need, but a psychological compulsion to visit department stores’ (p.181).
‘Dancing, she was singled out as an individual, asked to perform in what has once been her chosen vocation. No longer was she a number, a nameless depersonalised prisoner’ (p.249).
Why relevant right now:
Sadly, astonishingly, the norms and attitudes in here still pervade society. It’s very useful to understand the origins of ongoing imbalances to understand how gender equality can progress.
Interest factor: 4/5
Coffee table cred: 4/5
Ignorance of external world while reading: 4/5
Book cover design: 2/5
Help the existential crisis: 4/5
