Women of the 20th Century Essay Example

From Betty's description of the mid twentieth century, there was a general uneasiness and sadness affecting women everywhere in America; this "problem" had no prejudice or preferences. The "problem that has no name" that Betty Friedan talks about is women's inability to find a sense of identity. Women are extremely unhappy because they have the God-Given ability and capacity to use their minds, voices, hands, and feet to express themselves and indulge in the millions of possibilities that life provides, but gender norms create obstacles for them to speak, walk, and think; it is like buying a sports car and driving it under the speed limit. Betty's message in the book The Feminine Mystique resonated with women and provided a key to unchain them from the prison that social expectations have created for them. The three key points that contributed to women’s suffering from “the problem” are women’s limited gender roles, overall inequality, and sense of dissatisfaction and boredom. 

Many people today cannot relate to the suffering of women during the 1950s and 1960s. Gender roles dictated every avenue of life ranging from home to public life. A woman was expected to maintain absolute femininity and follow a structured daily routine of being homemaker and child-bearer. As Betty represents in her writing “All they had to do was devote their lives to finding a husband and bearing children.... this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture” (Friedan 1963).  Certain gender roles and conventions were socially enforced, however, the 1950s were not as conformist as they are commonly depicted, and dissatisfaction with the status quo boiled just beneath the surface of the otherwise calm peacetime society. The problem did not stem from women who had careers or women who had higher education, but from women whose sole ambition was to be married and have children. As Betty suggests, “These women are very “feminine” in the usual sense, and yet they still suffer the problem” (Friedan 1963). Women quickly became aggravated with the notion of being tools created for men’s convenience; they had a mental sickness that only other women could understand.  

Even if a women decided to live in opposition with their presumed duties, they would only be faced with backlash. Women in the workforce were overworked and underpaid, if they were seeking higher education, it would be to improve their domestic skills and to find husbands, and any property inherited or allotted to them was under the supervision of their husbands or another male relative. They were severely underappreciated and discriminated against compared to their male counterparts. It is essential to provide equal rights for everyone regardless of their appearance or gender. A strong community hosts a variety of different people who all use their abilities to find their natural balance in the world; for one person to have an ascribed status of authority over another is a great injustice, and for that, Sojourner Truth spread a similar message of remaining vigilant in the cause of equal rights for all. Inequality contributed a great deal to women’s “problem” in the mid 20th century. Besides education, career, and property there was a large disparity between women’s sexuality and safety. Women did not have easy access to legal abortion and affordable childcare, this meant getting pregnant outside of marriage was always a one-way ticket to a life of domestic slavery without choice. These important discrepancies sparked the feminist movement and led to a nationwide coalition between women of all creed and color to demand fair treatment. 

Women in the 50s and 60s had more time and conveniences than the women who had lived before them. Women before the 50s were completely consumed by work in the home and their families very survival depended on the demanding work they did on the farms. Post WWII was a modern time which made homemaking simple and easy, but these are characteristics associated with stifling boredom. Women needed liberation from everyday daunting tasks which required low effort and provided absolutely no stimulus or challenge. We may not have known it in the 50s, but we do know now that boredom causes anxiety, depression, anger, loneliness which corresponds to the feelings described by Betty’s “problem.” The radical feminist brainwashing tactics were quite simply not powerful enough to convince women to continue their monotonous routines. To put it simply, women felt no happiness, thrill, or fulfillment from being the perfect stay-at-home spouse. 

Betty Friedan’s ideas were met with hostility and criticism by Phyllis Schlafly who argued that Women Libbers, “is a total assault on the role of the American woman as a wife and mother, and on the family as the basic unit of society” (Schlafly 1972). Phyllis’s frame of mind outlined how of women have much to gain from being a homemaker and a dependent; she proposed that women should take pride and view themselves as having a superior influence over family life and child rearing. The argument further details how a woman has special privileges and would much rather “cuddle a baby” (Schlafly 1972) than find success in a career or education. Phyllis represents a portion of the women who are contempt with the conventional gender roles of a woman. 

The women of the mid 20th century created a legacy of feminist movement’s that lead to a substantial number of accomplishments such as the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments, and Roe V. Wade protection of woman’s legal abortion. Although women saw big strides of success in their goal to reach equality, there remains remnants of discrimination in modern American society even today. We are all entitled to human rights including the right to live free, safe, and unmolested.