The Feminine Mystique

I loved this book because it simultaneously gives us a taste of the fierce spirit of the women’s liberation movement but also demonstrates what was wrong with Friedan’s particular flavor of feminism at the time: namely, that it was centered around white and mostly privileged women.

Reading this book is like being transported back to the 1960s and being a fly on the wall in the homes of women who were done with the patriarchy, who wanted to have careers and earn money, but were also grappling with their own roles in society.

It’s a historical document but also, in… show more.

When and where in our life journey we read a book is significant. Written more than a half-century ago, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, published in 1963, changed the world and many women’s lives, including mine. Working behind a typewriter, with a new college degree in hand and waiting for a Prince Charming to marry and rescue me, Friedan made me realize that women would have to be able to take care of themselves and that a supposedly blissful life in suburbia was really a powerless trap. As a result, I went to law school, where at Rutgers Law, I was… show more.