The Feminine Mystique: 50 Years

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W. W. Norton & Company, Feb 11, 2013 - History - 562 pages
A 50th-anniversary edition of the trailblazing book that changed women’s lives, with a new introduction by Gail Collins.

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 they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews as well as insights that continue to inspire. This 50th–anniversary edition features an afterword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen as well as a new introduction by Gail Collins.
 

Contents

The Problem That Has No Name
7
The Sexual Sell
242
Housewifery Expands to Fill the Time Available
277
The SexSeekers
306
The Comfortable
372
A New Life Plan for Women
407
Epilogue
457
Afteruord by Anna Quindlen
477
Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Edition
511
The Happy Housewife Heroine
518
The SexDirected Educators
525
Index
543
139
544
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Betty Friedan (1921–2006), a transformational leader of the women’s movement, founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and authored many works, including The Second Stage, The Fountain of Age, and Life So Far. Gail Collins was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1945. She received a B.A. in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She writes an op-ed column for The New York Times every Thursday and Saturday. She was also the first woman to hold the position of Editorial Page Editor at the Times, which she held from 2001 to 2007. She has also written several books including America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines and When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.

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