But her delivery of this particular criticism ranks among the most withering. Hooks was by no means the first to have a problem with Friedan's white-girl-problems worldview. According to hooks, Friedan had written myopically, as though women of other races and classes-those who, she argued, were most victimized by sexist oppression-simply didn't exist. In 1984, black feminist theorist bell hooks introduced her own book, From Margin to Center, with a searing indictment of The Feminine Mystique: Though Friedan's book had spawned what came to be known as the second-wave feminist movement, it focused on what wasn't a universal female problem but rather a problem endured only by white, upper- and middle-class mothers and wives.

According to the aforementioned thinkers and philosophers, Betty Friedan's 1963 book is a courageous text with a noble goal, but.

So, lest we get too rosy remembering the achievements of The Feminine Mystique, let's review in further detail some of those bubble-bursting, parade-raining criticisms.

Like any beloved, much-studied text, secular or sacred, The Feminine Mystique deserves to be read critically in order to be understood fully. I argue that although Friedan’s discussion of work was indeed elitist, the biggest problem with her book’s neglect of black women is that she missed the chance to show her white middle-class audience that some women were able to combine their identities as wives, mothers, family co-providers, and activists with interests beyond the home.'Anger Boiled Up, and Betty Friedan Was There': 'Feminine Mystique' at 50 And black leaders of both sexes had a long tradition of supporting women’s roles as co-providers for their families and as activist leaders of the community. But the upper middle-class wives and mothers who were least likely to have to work for financial necessity were already long before this was also true of white women the most likely to work, suggesting that something more than dire necessity was involved. Yes, many black wives and mothers had to work, and at jobs that were truly horrible. Some people have argued that black women would have loved to be homemakers, and that’s the weakness in Friedan’s defense of meaningful work for women.

Glaring omission, all the sadder because Friedan herself had led fights against segregated housing.

The feminism mystique