The Problem That Has No Name

by Betty Friedan

'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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Classics, Essays, Short Stories, Politics, History

55 pages, Paperback

First published February 22, 2018

About the author

American feminist Betty Naomi Friedan (née Bettye Naomi Goldstein) wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and cofounded the National Organization for Women in 1966. This book started the "second wave" of feminism.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Problem That Has No Name" - today we would probably not see it in the utter meaninglessness and boredom of the isolated housewife in Betty Friedan's description, as the pendulum of time has once again swung and moved towards more equality between men and women - at least in my privileged part of the world.

Why do I recognise the desperation anyway then?

Why do I know countless educated women today, working full-time in highly skilled jobs, while raising children and decorating homes and cooking dinners and going to the gym to keep fit and beautiful in their forties and fifties - feeling that problem without a name lurking underneath the polished surface?

I suspect the answer is that there is no such thing as a happy life lived within the unquestioned "ideal" of the conventional family, where partners promise to love each other and belong to each other until death does them part. As if that is promisable. A promise given to be broken despite best of intentions, best of ambitions, best of ideas.

Sometimes when I get most frustrated about the bitter unfairness of denying people same-sex marriage out of tradition or piety, I wonder if the solution is not to abolish marriage as a legal concept completely, rather than allowing it to all lovers. It would take away the absurdity of impossible commitment, of property rights to other human beings' thoughts and acts and time. It would end inequality effectively, forcing individuals to acknowledge their true needs and wishes rather than societal expectations. After all, we would still be able choose to live with another human being forever, as long as the choice is free and mutual, - so the abolishment would not take away any benefits from true lovers.

Imagine a world without marriage! Would it be without love? Hardly. Only people would not stay beyond the "best before" date in hopelessly loveless relationships labelled "marriage" in order to show they "can make it work". What for?

I think Betty Friedan's argument against American housewifery actually is an argument against the subduing of one individual to please another at the expense of individual rights, regardless of whether the individual is male or female, straight or gay, young or old, monogamous or polygamous...

Feminism is just one way of fighting for freedom to choose. Domesticated humanity is the problem that has no name.

[RuthAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended, but you might as well read The Feminine Mystique, I think

I bought this slim Penguin Modern months ago, and I should have read it immediately. Reading older feminist writings makes me discouraged on one hand because WHY haven't things changed more?! But it also gives me a sense of unity and solidarity: there is work to be done, and we are all in it together. After reading these 50 pages, I see that Rebecca Solnit stands on the shoulders of Betty Friedan, and now I need to read The Feminine Mystique and all of that second-wave feminism. Heck, I need to read the first wave! Give me all your feminist, suffragist writings, and let's all smash the patriarchy together.

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

''She was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question: 'Is this all?' ''



2 excellent essays. the first one is better than the second one. i'm not planning on reading The Feminine Mystique because Betty acts like rich white suburban housewives were the most victimized group in America but this one is fine.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 41st book in the Penguin Moderns series is Betty Friedan's The Problem That Has No Name.  The selected work in this volume was first published in her seminal The Feminine Mystique (1963), in which Friedan 'gave voice to countless American housewives... and set the women's movement in motion'.  In The Problem That Has No Name, one finds the titular essay, as well as a piece entitled 'The Passionate Journey'.

I have read criticism about Friedan's work before, and other tracts which mention her, but this was my first taste of her original work.  Friedan notices a marked shift between the 1920s and 1950s in the priorities of women in the United States: 'A century earlier, women had fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a husband.  By the mid fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bat.'  This denotes a crisis in society; few women decided to pursue careers for their own fulfilment, working instead to support their families.

Friedan's work is all-encompassing, and she is very understanding of Everywoman.  The first essay begins in the following way: 'The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women.  It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States.  Each suburban wife struggled with it alone.  As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slip-cover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffered Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question: "Is this all?"'  As the title of this work suggests, Friedan suggests reasons as to why a name had never before seen given to 'this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women...'.  The 'problem that has no name' consisted of the many women believing that any individuality they once had was swallowed up as soon as they became wives and mothers.

Useful statistics have been woven in throughout The Problem That Has No Name, in order to reinforce or better illustrate Friedan's points.  She also makes use of the many interviews which she has conducted with females all across America, discussing various problems which they had with their husbands or children.  It is in these instances that her profession of magazine journalism really shows.  She notes the point at which she began to notice signs of something buried within widespread society, and common for so many different women: 'But after a while I began to recognize the telltale signs of this other problem.  I saw the same signs in suburban ranch houses and split-levels on Long Island and in New Jersey and Westchester County; in colonial houses in a small Massachusetts town; on patios in Memphis; in suburban and city apartments; in living rooms in the Midwest.'  In the 1960s, Friedan notes that news outlets began to report on 'the actual unhappiness of the American housewife.'  Although she does not talk about her own life in detail, Friedan also touches upon her own experiences of bringing up her children during this period.

The dissatisfaction of women is a major theme in the second essay too, but from an historical perspective which focuses on the path to women's rights.  'The Passionate Journey' begins: 'It was the need for a new identity that started women, a century ago, on that passionate journey... away from home.'  Of this journey, which women felt compelled to make in order to keep a grasp on their personal individuality, and to try and escape from societal confines, Friedan writes: 'Theirs was an act of rebellion, a violent denial of the identity of women as it was then defined.  It was the need for a new identity that led these passionate feminists to forge new trails for women.  Some of these trails were unexpectedly rough, some were dead ends, and some may have been false, but the need for women to find new trails was real.'  This essay is a real celebration of what women have achieved.

Friedan's writing style is highly accessible, and she takes a clear point of view throughout.  Her prose is highly engaging and quite easygoing, despite the wealth of information which she denotes.  She is incredibly perceptive of womankind, viewing them as individuals rather than as a singular collective, and recognising that many women who were suffering silently during the period which she examines did so for myriad reasons.  The Problem That Has No Name is an empowering tome, and I will certainly be reading the rest of The Feminine Mystique at some point.  Despite the fact that it was published over five decades ago, Friedan's work is still highly relevant in the twenty-first century.

[Gabrielė || book.duo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Du gana trumpi tekstai, pirmasis man, asmeniškai, daug įdomesnis nei antras, kuriame pateiktą informaciją daugiausiai jau kažkur skaičiau ir žinojau. Bet kalbėdama apie problemą, neturinčią vardo, Betty Friedan užkabina labai įdomų fenomeną, kuris, manau, tam tikra prasme aktualus ir šiais laikais. Po pirmosios feminizmo bangos ir didžiojo jos laimėjimo – balsavimo teisės moterims suteikimo, rodėsi, kad kova laimėta. Moterims atsivėrė daugiau durų ir galimybių, jos dažniau baigdavo mokslus ir gaudavo išsilavinimą, galėjo turėti savų tikslų. Bet galų gale, atmetus visas laisves, viskas grįždavo į ten pat – šeimos kūrimą ir vaikų auginimą. Ir štai čia jos susidurdavo su netikėta tuštuma, klausimu, persekiojančiu jas dieną naktį, tomis poilsio minutėmis, kai gali atsikvėpti nuo aplinkui lakstančių atžalų ir maisto ruošimo. Klausimas buvo „Ar tai viskas?“.

Net jei dabar išgyvename ketvirtąją feminizmo bangą, tikiu, kad šis klausimas vis dar iškyla gana dažnai. Net jei turime kur kas daugiau galimybių nei tos moterys, kurios pirmosios užčiuopė šį klausimą, jis niekur nedingo. Autorė susikoncentruoja tik į Amerikos namų šeimininkes, bet ši patirtis, neabejoju, buvo (ir vis dar yra) gana universali ir bendražmogiška. Trumpai ir glaustai, bet itin efektyviai šiame kūrinyje nagrinėjamos tokio fenomeno priežastys ir pasekmės, galiausiai atvedusios prie antrosios feminizmo bangos susiformavimo. Net jei pati ir sunkiai galiu tapatintis su namų šeimininkėmis, drąsiai prisipažįstu, kad tas gyvenimo etapas, galbūt kažkada laukiantis ateityje, nemenkai gąsdina – ne tik dėl minėto klausimo, bet ir dėl galybės kitų priežasčių. Dėkoju feminizmui ir visoms toms moterims, kad didelę dalį problemų, slėgusių tų laikų moterų pečius, pavyko išspręsti, bet priešais atsiveriantis kelias, deja, dar gana ilgas. Bet kokiu atveju, be galo žavėjausi autorės protu ir sumanumu ir šią nedidelę knygutę tikrai dėčiau į „labai verta perskaityti tiek vyrams, tiek moterims“ lentynėlę šalia kitų apie moterų ir apskritai žmonių teises kalbančių veikalų.

[sophiereads · Rating 4 out of 5]

„I must think over things for myself and get to understand them…“

[Anne]

I would recommend this (or preferably, the full Feminine Mystique) to anyone interested in how western feminism fared after the first wave's main objective (the vote) was reached. When Friedan wrote her text in the early sixties, women's general standard of living was in some important ways worse than the 1920s. This little book convincingly shows us that human rights' advancements are not linear, but rather that we have to stay vigilant when it comes to freedom.

EDIT

I'm listening to Rebecca Traister's Good and Mad and apparently Friedan was not very enlightened when it comes to... anyone who's not a white married middle-class housewife and mother, so it seems. Another nice thing about Traister's book is that it introduced me to Florence Kennedy, a very badass feminist.

[melmarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Feminism was not a dirty joke. The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a stage of evolution far short of their human capacity. 'The domestic function of woman does not exhaust her powers,' the Rev. Theodore Parker preached in Boston in 1853. 'To make one half the human race consume its energies in the functions of housekeeper, wife and mother is a monstrous waste of the most precious material God ever made.' "

[Hestia Istiviani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read in English but this review is being written in Bahasa Indonesia

"Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity."

Nama Betty Friedan awalnya terdengar asing bagiku. Aku bahkan tidak sadar kalau sudah memiliki satu eksemplar buku ini kalau bukan karena melihat pembaruan status dari mbak Melisa. Judulnya saja, bagiku, kurang "menggoda" Tapi ternyata isinya, bisa membuatku memberikna 4 bintang.

The Problem That Has No Name terdiri dari dua tulisan yang dipilih dari buku Friedan yang berjudul The Feminine Mystique yang pertama kali diterbitkan pada tahun 1963. Maka, jangan kaget jika Friedan membahas mengenai para istri (housewife) di tahun 1950an dan 1960an.

Bagi pembaca Indonesia sepertiku, fenomena yang terjadi di kalangan wanita di Amerika Serikat tahun 1950-1960an menjadi sebuah pengetahuan baru. Ternyata, para wanita memang "dipersiapkan" untuk menikah. Untuk mengurus suami dan anak-anaknya serta tidak luput untuk mengurus rumah agar tetap indah. Ketika itu, standar kebahagiaan wanita diukur dari berapa banyak anak yang dilahirkan dan bagaimana seorang istri bisa mengurus suaminya. Maka dari itu, persentase wanita yang tidak melanjutkan ke jenjang perguruan tinggi cukup banyak. Bahkan ada juga yang memutuskan untuk tidak menyelesaikan studinya dan memilih untuk dipinang.

Kata "feminisme" ataupun "kebebasan dalam berpikir" terasa asing bagi wanita-wanita itu. Narasi yang muncul terhadap kata tersebut dibingkai sedemikian rupa sebagai kata yang memiliki makna negatif. Bahwa sesungguhnya, wanita harus menjaga femininitasnya. Tidak ada ceritanya seorang wanita menjadi ahli fisika, pengacara, dan lain-lain karena seharusnya berada di rumah (sepertinya narasi ini juga mulai dibentuk dan dibesar-besarkan oleh kaum anti-feminis...di Indonesia, misalnya).

Akan tetapi, pada suatu titik, ternyata para wanita tersebut merasa tidak bahagia. Padahal mereka sudah menikah, sudah memiliki anak, dan mampu mengurus rumah dengan baik. Ohya, perlu diingat, yang menjadi sorotan utama Friedan adalah wanita Amerika Serikat kalangan menengah ke atas.

Awalnya, banyak ahli, termasuk psikolog beranggapan bahwa ketidakbahagiaan itu sebagai suatu kendala dalam menyelesaikan pekerjaan rumah tangganya. Maka, solusi yang diberikan pun merupakan kelas-kelas atau lokakarya untuk menjadi istri dan ibu yang baik.

"They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights -- the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fight for."

Friedan mencoba menjawab bahwa para wanita ini telah kehilangan identitasnya sebagai diri sendiri. Sebab, para wanita tersebut selalu dilihat sebagai istri dari seseorang, bukan sebagai dirinya sendiri. Terlebih, pergaulan mereka juga diatur oleh masyarakat ketika itu. Mereka tidak bisa menyuarakan pendapatnya sendiri. Friedan pun menuliskan kalau hak untuk memilih dan berpartisipasi dalam politik dapat membantu wanita menemukan siapa dirinya (kembali).

Friedan juga mendorong wanita agar kembali ke sekolah, ke pendidikan tinggi dan menyelesaikan studinya. Bagi Friedan, bumi ini sudah berisi banyak wanita tapi otaknya tidak dimanfaatkan dengan baik untuk kemajuan masyarakat sekitar. Dan itu merupakan sebuah kerugian. Bagi Friedan, tidak masalah jika wanita ini harus bercerai sebab pendidikan bisa membantu mereka untuk menyuarakan pikirannya sendiri tanpa takut didikte oleh laki-laki.

The Problem That Has No Name mungkin merupakan awalan yang bagus ketika ingin mengenal tulisan-tulisan feminisme karya Betty Friedan. Terutama bagi pembaca di Indonesia. Kita jadi lebih mengetahui bahwa Amerika Serikat pun pernah mengalami masa-masa "kelam" diskriminasi gender.

[Liam O'Leary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Penguin Modern 41/50 (Reading them all in order!)

I liked this because it saved me time having to read The Feminine Mystique!! While I disagree with her views often, this was relatively more engaging and relatable than similar feminist works I have read. Betty definitely is getting closer to reality of "the problem that has no name" than Simone de Beauvoir's far more abstract The Second Sex did, so by comparison, I prefer Betty. However much like The Second Sex, it doesn't seem like it's making concrete progress or direction.

Yes, it does seem like society has imprisoned women unhappily under a construct of femininity, but why and how or who is still not clear... My main gripe is that in that vagueness, many sweeping assumptions are made about "types of women" and "blame" when it's not in Betty's power (not should it be in anyone's) to make those assertions. She makes the same weakness as Simone de Beauvoir of using testimonies from a random handful of clearly unhappy women, sometimes an n=1 of a demographic, and then presumes they represent all American women. The frustration I have when things are pinned on Freud, or types of women, or other subjective and temporary things makes me think Betty doesn't take her argument seriously, because they hinge on the oppressive stereotyping she's criticizing, and that she's pinning it on external conventions that could (and has) fall away to take away the substance of her viewpoint, when she should be talking more about the core of the problem.

I could not see why Betty is sure the problem could not be sexual. I as a reader am only told that it is, and must be, and so now have one woman telling me exactly how all American women are, and ought to be, while at the same time saying that someone or something else is doing just this and oppressing her and others in this way.

Despite my clear gripes, I absolutely think these are great essays and I do like how she writes, because it has genuine feeling and is definitely getting at "the problem". Marriages haven't been working out in America, and she's calling it out early, and trying to open discourse among women. She's finding patterns and speaking for a common experience, and I like that directness. I like that capacity to build community and raise awareness. I only wish she'd kept that positivity and drive instead of making weak statements.

It's just hard to know whether she clearly defines the problem at all. I'm here wondering whether progress we've made in women's rights since this book has corrected this.

My feeling is that some of these women may simply have been depressed. If a family and material life is not fulfilling, perhaps the wife is depressed and/or reacting to hormonal contraceptives? Another thing I wonder when reading this or similar feminist works is I do not understand why male lived experiences are never really considered in comparison, or why no male perspective is relevant? Many married men get depressed too? Are none of these situations possible for men? Men have been dying by suicide thricefold for the last century, surely thet're not that happy either? Men have different but equivalent societal expectations dragging them down too? By compromising and communicating our pain we might find ways to work together better? I just never hear that ring of optimism or compassion or balance in most feminist works, and it's what makes me ultimately see them as polemics rather than social theory.

Although I am irrelevant and outside of the sphere of feminist discourse, I'm fairly happy intersectional feminism chronologically swept in later to start addressing systemic prejudices that drive inequality that were already in the assumptions of earlier feminists themselves, which is why Audre Lorde's The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House is a better feminist work IMO for this Penguin Modern series, because it seems to be pushing the ball further for progress.

[Georgie Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

“we can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: “I want something more than my husband and my children and my home””

A very insightful read - I am so accustomed to the “third wave” feminism i’ve experienced my entire life that i take what i read in this book for granted everyday.

[Kristi Hovington · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew through this; it’s so readable, zips along, is persuasive and convincing. One the one hand, I was enraged at the reporting by reputable news agencies of the time about how being educated hurts housewives by making them dream of more, that being educated is unnecessary for women, interspersed with heartbreaking interviews by Friedan of housewives who feel diminished - though not by being educated. I cannot believe that in the 60’s, this kind of buffoonery passed as science. Yet, I look at the rise of anti-feminist views all over the world, and in my home country particularly; people still feel this way about women- from the recent odious commencement speech by a NFL player to the strict curtailing of reproductive rights, this idea lingers. So, although this book is of its time, it is also, sadly, of the times.

[grace dodd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not an American housewife or woman fighting for the right to vote; I am not a black woman who has watched her children sold into slavery or even a mother at all. Yet somehow I relate to the struggles Betty outlines through every one of these women, somehow I see parts of myself in every single one.

[Vienna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two great essays that made me learn a lot about the history of feminism. This one everyone should read in my opinion. Highly recommend it!

[Joe Maggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling read. Split into two halves, the first aims to establish and define the “problem that has no name”, being the lack of fulfilment and ennui felt by many American women in the 1950s and 1960s. For me, Friedan successfully argues that a lack of agency and an imposition by society of a definition of what contentment looks like means that women of the time suffered an emptiness and a lack of an ability to achieve their own goals. On a wider basis this essay serves to remind us all of how achieving fulfilment can take so much more than we think on face value. It also provides an introspective train of thought as to how far we have solved this problem up to today and whether societal changes in the 2020s risk us regressing back to a society that places restrictions on female agency.

The second half is more of a recount of the early history of the feminist movement. Very insightful particularly because it focuses less on the well-covered history of the 20th century and instead looks at the 19th century and provides some very fascinating tidbits from the main leaders of the movement at that time.

[Lili · Rating 4 out of 5]

فمینیست ها تصویر دیرین زن را در هم شکستند اما نتوانستند خصومت، تعصب و تبعیض را از بین ببرند اینها هم چنان باقی ماندند. هم چنین نتوانستند تصویر جدید زنان را در موقعیتی ترسیم کنند که دیگر فرودست مردان وابسته منفعل و ناتوان در تفکر و
تصمیم گیری نبودند.

[Ioanna Stefani · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book about the women

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5 stars

Though I would argue the feminist movement was pretty one sided in history, as many groups other than white, middle-class women were not included, I think I also understand why this is always the case.

These were the women that had lots of free time and money and resources in respect to women who were poor and starving and had to work to death just to stay alive. When one has resources, money and time it is much easier to start a movement and get people to listen to your problem. And even then, it took these fairly privileged women (compared to others less privileged than them) years and years and so much heckling and being publicly shamed and faulty science and misogyny to even have the right to own property, their own money and vote. To not be under the ownership of your husband when you marry him.

I would imagine the women of the nineteenth century would both be shocked and proud of how far feminism has come. As ever I am proud to call myself a feminist (in-progress)!

[Abantika(hiltonjenkin) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Penguin Modern Classic features two essays from the very popular book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, who is said to have set second wave of feminism in motion.

This book talks about THE American Dream, where women were pushed back to the kitchen in 1960s America. About how she was perceived as a mother and a wife but never as herself. How even, she failed to recognize herself as a separate and complete individual from husband and children.

How she was robbed off all her ambitions. How passion was a humiliating word to be associated with a woman. And how depression and frustration became a national phenomenon among the American housewives before it was widely acknowledged.

It's a very important piece to read. If you are trying to feminist literatures I'll suggest you go for these extracted texts. It builds up the hunger for the main fat book which or else may seem a bit intimidating.

[Gabrielle Gonzales · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great introduction to the history of the feminist movement. However it's just that: an introduction. I found myself struggling to find a clear line of argumentation and disappointed myself expecting solutions from Friedan, but I suppose I'll just need to get a hold of The Feminine Mystique for that.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the door of all those pretty suburban houses opened a crack to permit a glimpse of uncounted thousands of American housewives who suffered alone from a problem that suddenly everyone was talking about, and beginning to take for granted, as one of those unreal problems in American life that can never be solved—like the hydrogen bomb.

Very interesting history and theory.

[nya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed that Friedan strictly wrote and did her research on white (middle class) women. That in mind, it made this essay(??) shallow and it had great potential only if there was more diversity. But again why am I even surprised, it’s product of it’s time.

[Ester Baroni]

“I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?”

[Qawiiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave it like 3.5 stars! I enjoyed Friedan’s compelling style in the first essay more than the second one, and it’s an important text of 2nd wave feminism, ofc. But any critiques I have of it have already been said by numerous people before me - she primarily focuses on one type of woman, dealing with a certain set of conditions (white, middle-class, in the purgatory of suburbia). Whilst she tries to branch out to include brief contemplation of women of colour (emphasis on brief - like literally one paragraph as far as I can remember mentioned a woman of colour) even this mention of Sojourner Truth did not dwell much on the variation of lived experiences of womanhood and thus lacked an intersectional understanding of ‘the problem that has no name’. I don’t really blame Friedan for this, I think she’s writing what she knows which is perfectly fine. But in terms of feminist works that would strike more of a chord with me, I know there are other writers who can do that so much better.

[Joana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, and while I would never recommend reading solely this book if you want to learn about feminism… this is such an interesting read for a very specific time.
This book is focused very much on the white, educated, middle-class experience, it speaks of those women… it starts with very fascinating sociological essay on this problem without a name, the lack of satisfaction and how it affected woman, it spoke of the period in the 50s where things seemed to go back for women.
The second text explains a bit of how we got there, it explores the History of feminism, the rise of those voices, and the opposition to those, but also the loss of those same voices.
This was a really interesting read that shows you a particular section to society and time!!!

[Frida Demant · Rating 5 out of 5]

"du skal kun highlight det vigtige"
*Mig der highlighter alle sætninger i denne bog*!

Enkelte af MANGE geniale sætninger:

"The groping words I heard from other women, on quiet afternoons when children were at school or on quiet evenings when husbands worked late, I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological implications"

"Sex did not fight the French Revolution, free the slaves in America, overthrow the Russian Tsar, drive the British out of India; but when the idea of human freedom moves the minds of men, it also moves the minds of women"

[Chiara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A much needed read that gives a really quick recap of the feminist movement, why it began in the first place and how women were back where they started by choice in 1950. It feels like we (mostly American womem) are setting ourselves back for no reason whatsoever other than turning our backs to the women who fought for our rights, to make a choice as to rebel against feminists. As the book and actual feminists say, it isn't a movement against men but against principles and laws that deem women as anything other than a human being with their own rights, equal to the way men are human beings with their own rights.

[Anka · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In mockery, the Assembly recommended that since ladies always get the 'choicest tidbits' at the table, the best seat in the carriage, and their choice of which side of the bed to lie on, 'if there is any inequity or oppression the gentlemen are the sufferers'."

It's horrific that arguments against feminism like this one are still being used to this day... the quote's from the 19th century btw.


This edition consists of two essays from the 1960s which are sadly still relevant today.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exploring and understanding the emptiness felt by housewives in America during the 1960s, this little book is a really interesting read, especially if, like me, you don’t know a great deal about the first two waves of feminism. 5 stars!

My full review: https://whatrebeccasread.wordpress.co...

[Georgiana Draica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took a break from reading and this book was the first i read in awhile and I can say wholeheartedly that it helped my mental state a little bit more. I recommend this book for everyone having a hard time right now. Seeing all this early stage feminist movement helped me ease my mind, it was really comforting even if the topic wasn’t a easy one. A 30-minute read worth every single second!!