Betty Friedan was a pivotal American feminist, activist, and writer. She is best known for igniting the second wave of feminism through her influential writings. Her work explored the profound dissatisfaction and unfulfillment experienced by many women in post-war society. Friedan's prose powerfully challenged traditional gender roles, inspiring generations to pursue personal and societal equality.
Defying accepted wisdom about love and work in old age, and about conventional male and female roles as we get older, Betty Friedan weaves together her own experience of age and a radical look at research studies and interviews. Her aim is to show that ageing is a new stage - a time of growth, not the final slide from youth.
The book that changed the consciousness of a country―and the world.Landmark, groundbreaking, classic―these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.
Betty Friedan argues that once past the initial stages of describing and working against politcal and economic injustices, the women's movement should focus on working with men to remake private and public tasks and attitudes.
'What if she isn't happy - does she think men are happy in this world? Doesn't she know how lucky she is to be a woman?' The pioneering Betty Friedan here identifies the strange problem plaguing American housewives, and examines the malignant role advertising plays in perpetuating the myth of the 'happy housewife heroine'. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
