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nathalieme's review against another edition
3.0
Rating: 3.5. I found the book provides a good insight into the thinking of the era and the driving gender norms in the 1950s and 1960s, including some laughable psychological theories considered scientific at the time. It helps understand where some of the still prevalent (fraught) gender norms came from. The book has some limitations as it only looks at white middle class women without acknowledging that the reality of that group is not universal. In addition, a lot of the arguments and statements are often made based on anecdotal evidence and observations rather than data. The author has conducted interviews and surveys, yet she has not made much effort to make any quantitative or qualitative analysis of those, which was a missed opportunity. Lastly, while the author points out to biases from the then scientific committee, media and scholars, she does not question her own biases which come to light in the book. Overall, worth the read.
laurenlaskowski's review against another edition
4.0
Some chapters are definitely skippable (social, statistical, and historical observations/arguments that no longer ring true or hold any force), but this should be required reading for life. Wish I would have read it sooner, but I'm afraid I wouldn't have understood it until now.
okaylauragrace's review against another edition
DNF, stopped on page 166. Not because I didn't like it. Will revisit someday when I'm not so busy!
sarahyfairy's review against another edition
3.75
Not doubt revolutionary at the time, but not as powerful to read in 2025.
emilydee's review
informative
inspiring
4.5
I thought I pretty much knew what this book was going to be about but I ended up finding it very interesting and enlightening and surprising and it’s very clear how it became as influential as it did. Also didn’t realize how bad the lack of personhood for women was and how much worse things got from after the first wave to the time of the feminine mystique and how progress can be undone…. Erm gulp. Really liked the long sections of interview excerpts with the housewives.
common_household_mom's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
Sometimes out of date, but at times her description of 1950s America stands exactly for today’s America in 2025, point-blank. I skimmed and skipped parts of it. I believe that when this book was published it was a society-changer.
I read it mostly as an amazed onlooker – I was raised with almost none of the described restrictions on my life goals, almost none of the described pressure to do only “feminine” things. Intellect and learning was highly prized in my family, and there was no notion that I would be less a female for pursuing them. Home cooking was also highly prized and both my father and my mother demonstrated the delights of cooking. But I greatly fear my country , for all the strides we have made, has now entered a very dark time for women.
I think by the time I reached adulthood, Friedan and others had already implemented change for women in this country. And yet, at my first corporate job in 1985, I was usually the only woman in a room full of 30+ men, all of them with a more powerful and more lucrative job than I had. Those men, the same age as me (in my 20s) would sometimes assume I was only there to make photocopies for them. Make your own photocopies! The misogyny has always been there. Perhaps it had faded to the background, but it looks like it has the power now.
The problem that Friedan calls “feminine mystique” is the lack of positive self-identity among a large swath of American women, most specifically housewives (but the unstated subtext in the book implies “white middle-class women”) of the 1950s and early 1960s. “A sense of emptiness, non-existence, nothingness”.
Friedan details how this feminine mystique comes from advertisers, capitalism’s need to always create more consumption, the faulty popularization of Freud’s grossly mistaken ideas, Margaret Mead, and more.
The section where Friedan discusses homosexuality is abhorrently wrong, and mars the whole book. NO. I had to skim this part because I was so disgusted by it, so forgive me if I’m actually misinterpreting what she said. She seems to blame homosexuality (as if it is a problem that requires blame) on the way some mothers (no mention of fathers) raised their sons (and the emphasis is vastly on homosexual men) is what made them gay. No, no, no.
But most of the book is spot on and, sadly, still applies today. It was truly painful to read the afterwords, written 10 to 35 years later, which detail all the gains women made, and how the right to an abortion was assured. In the 1997 afterword Friedan wrote: “New birth-control technology even beyond RU486, as well as the evolving national consensus, will soon make the whole issue of abortion obsolete.” As of this writing, Jan 31, 2025, the access to those drugs is severely threatened nationwide, even despite a fairly wide national consensus that access to abortion should be available.
What is going to become of us now?
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Sexism