She tried to interest magazine editors in stories about the unhappy and unfulfilled educated wives and mothers she encountered among her Smith College friends and suburban neighbors. Research and Writingīetty Friedan was a freelance journalist with three children when she began the book that would be The Feminine Mystique. The Schlesinger Library's exhibit, drawn from Friedan's voluminous papers, traces The Feminine Mystique from Friedan's initial research and drafts through its marketing and publication, and on to responses from readers, parodies, academic studies, and anniversary editions. Friedan's assertion that women needed meaningful work to be fulfilled propelled her book to the best-seller list and began a national conversation about gender equality. In 1963, journalist Betty Friedan described a malaise among American housewives who felt trapped by the expectation that they be fulfilled by the role of wife and mother.
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