The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan · first published 1963
36% recommend57% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Frames the postwar housewife's dissatisfaction as a real social problem. It is an influential, non-ideological work that helps readers of any era understand the period and the stakes of work and identity.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Landmark, groundbreaking, classic―these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of “the problem that has no name”: the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women’s confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how t
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great book on this topic is friedan's feminine mystique (1963). She wrote about the spiritual crisis affecting a generation of young women who were more likely to be 'homemakers' than their mothers. worth reading at least the intro IMO for anyone who feels…
on “The data are clear: The boys are not all right” ↗> great book on this topic is friedan's feminine mystique (1963) Another is “The Will To Love: Men, Masculinity, and Change” by bell hooks (2004) There aren’t a lot of authors that I feel get it right about issues relating to men and masculinity. Bell hooks…
on “The data are clear: The boys are not all right” ↗I assume the author is the Betty Friedan. This would be about 5 years before she wrote The Feminine Mystique, easily one of the most influential books in modern history. It's kind of fascinating to see her here at 37, working in obscurity, knocking out fairly pedestrian writing assignments, when in just a few…
on “The Coming Ice Age (1958)” ↗Two that did it for me: - The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. Really deepened my understanding of how Western and other cultures think about moral and ethical issues. - The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan. It's a feminist book that is very non-ideological, and helped me, as someone born in the 80's, appreciate some very real and practical issues that feminism has helped us address.
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗…is what I thought about posting. I've read a lot of books this year (45 books totaling 22,000 pages), the most important being: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Silent Spring, The Feminine Mystique, The Grapes of Wrath, The Price of Inequality, The Happiness Hypothesis. But, out of all that (which I had to go look up on my Goodreads), HPMOR is what came to mind, both an engaging story, thought…
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?” ↗…scenario. He's trying to argue for or against some kind of social policy, but he simply has no idea what he's talking about. I doubt he's even heard of Bakke v. UC Regents, never-mind read Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique. Knowing about these is very important in the context of gender/race/etc. policies. My point is only that strong, sweeping opinions and viewpoints need to be properly contextualized. There are, of course,…
on “Outraged about the Google diversity memo?” ↗…myth of "male privilege" that applies to the top 1% percent of men but not the majority of men. That's a major theoretical error that's obvious in 1st wave feminist books such as The Second Sex, The Feminine Mystique and it goes uncorrected to this day. For someone who was bullied in elementary school, sexual invisibility in high school and college was a retraumatization that still affects me more than 30 years later.…
on “Vitalik Buterin on shape rotators vs. wordcels” ↗The seminal feminist work in the US is probably Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.
on “Why 3D doesn't work and never will.” ↗…reinforce the views of those sceptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians”. > At the time the women’s movement was divided over the issue of lesbianism – Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), had labelled lesbians the “lavender menace” – and many liberal feminists turned against Millett.
on “What Western feminists can learn from Iran” ↗…conditions faced by workers in industrial England. "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, about the exploitative conditions in the meatpacking industry and helped lead to the passage of food safety laws. "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan, detailing the struggles and discrimination faced by women in the workforce and paved the way for the feminist movement.
on “Amazon Is Running Out of Warehouse Workers. Cue the Robots” ↗…age of marriage dropped, and the portion of women attending college descreased. Housewives were increasingly dissatisfied, which drew them to the second-wave feminist movement. This is why the book The Feminine Mystique sold well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique
on “As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit the workforce” ↗…sphere. Especially when you consider the 1950s, when (white, middle-to-upper class) women were "free" to do just that. They were miserable. I know I would have been miserable too. There's a reason the Feminine Mystique exists, and the 50s housewife who drowns herself in a bottle of booze is a cliche. For most people, that's just not enough to make a fulfilling life by itself. Even women today who are SAHMs have other…
on “Is There Anything Good About Men?” ↗…people, men, women, and, perhaps, non binary persons, explaining stuff they already know to them. Cry bullying is extremely toxic. I adore Alice Walker, E. Annie Proulx, and Margaret Atwood. I've read the Feminine Mystique and the Second Sex. I, however, have yet to read Sylvia Plath. While ruminating about feminism, my thoughts eventually after a few days lead me to my 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Debra Schmitt, whose…
on “The many selves of Sylvia Plath: the poet’s early letters” ↗This reminds me a lot of what was described in the book "The Feminine Mystique." There, they defined a “problem that has no name” that was the sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction experienced by women who, by all external measures, were living the ideal life: successful, comfortable,…
on “The Whispering Earring” ↗