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The Second Stage: With a New Introduction
First published in 1981, The Second Stage is eerily prescient and timely, a reminder that much of what is called new thinking in feminism has been eloquently observed and argued before. Warning the women's movement against dissolving into factionalism, male-bashing, and preoccupation with sexual and identity politics rather than bottom-line political and economic inequalities, Friedan argues that once past the initial phases of describing and working against political and economic injustices, the women's movement should focus on working with men to remake private and public arrangements that work against full lives with children for women and men both. Friedan's agenda to preserve families is far more radical than it appears, for she argues that a truly equitable preservation of marriage and family may require a reorganization of many aspects of conventional middle-class life, from the greater use of flex time and job-sharing, to company-sponsored daycare, to new home designs to permit communal housekeeping and cooking arrangements.
Called "utopian" fifteen years ago, when it seemed unbelievable that women had enough power in the workplace to make effective demands, or that men would join them, some of these visions are slowly but steadily coming to pass even now. The problem Friedan identifies is as real now as it was years "how to live the equality we fought for," and continue to fight for, with "the family as new feminist frontier." She writes not only for women's liberation but for human liberation.
Called "utopian" fifteen years ago, when it seemed unbelievable that women had enough power in the workplace to make effective demands, or that men would join them, some of these visions are slowly but steadily coming to pass even now. The problem Friedan identifies is as real now as it was years "how to live the equality we fought for," and continue to fight for, with "the family as new feminist frontier." She writes not only for women's liberation but for human liberation.
394 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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490 people want to read
About the author
Betty Friedan
35Ìýbooks563ÌýfollowersAmerican feminist Betty Naomi Friedan (²Ôé±ð 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.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 14, 2018
Fifteen years after "The Feminine Mystique", Betty Friedan wrote this book as a reflection on the years went by and to give a suggestion for the next stage in feminism. She has some poignant remarks about where feminists went wrong, but do not see how wrong she is all in herself although her feminism is more moderate than the wave we witness in these days.
She correctly identifies feminism inability to understand the biological complexities between the sexes. She also identifies the bummer of feminists trying to apply "too literal an analogy from old revolutions of class or color to women's situation in life". She also reacts toward the blaming feminists do toward the "patriarchy" as a concept of man-domination of society.
But all these small things are really nothing more than a soft error because she does all the same mistakes again and again. She wants women to get equal access to male-dominated jobs as lawyers, dentists, and medical doctors. But she does not identify work as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, builders, garbage collectors and so on as the major male-dominated ones. It is a blind eye to what men really do because it is focused on the things women want. This blindness is repeated time and time again. She does not use "patriarchy" much, but she does use "male definition"(and other negative groupings of maleness) when talking about the traditional family. She even makes the claim that feminism is not that much communism because communism was a male revolution, rather - they should go back to Marx and take it further to also include women. To hell with private property, we need communal beta properties. There is not an argument against communism, because feminism is communism as much as any communist or socialist inspired movement. The ideology does not disappear magically because of a different idea of what genders should be involved, neither does it become any better.
One of the most enjoyable chapters is the case study of the Project Athena at West Point, the first women to enroll in military training. But here also the bias is clear. When she discusses the thing about women not managing to do the pull-ups required she goes statistical to say that for every one girl who did not manage to do it, there were three boys. No, that is to say - it's not that bad for the girls. But if she would have been fair, the ratio would have to be something like 1 girl for every 12 boys. I feel that most of the book have this bias, unable to go into a back an forth with arguments rather disguising the opposition as bad, period. That goes also for the on that times ongoing Equal Rights Amendment. She writes a lot about it, and she mentions a lot about those wrong-thinking Moral Majority people - but she doe snot mention their argument. Because feminism is for the ERA, it has to be right. Because feminism is for abortion rights, it has to be right.
That is why she also include a little note given to her, about those anti-ERA demonstrators. That they look so angry, and that anger is hate - so much hate and so little love. So, it all is reduced to how they look while they demonstrate a bad piece of legislation. Go figure. Feminism has not improved a bit since.
All that aside, the writing flows well, and I would put it up there as one of the better feminist books from the time for the cause of feminism I've read so far.
She correctly identifies feminism inability to understand the biological complexities between the sexes. She also identifies the bummer of feminists trying to apply "too literal an analogy from old revolutions of class or color to women's situation in life". She also reacts toward the blaming feminists do toward the "patriarchy" as a concept of man-domination of society.
But all these small things are really nothing more than a soft error because she does all the same mistakes again and again. She wants women to get equal access to male-dominated jobs as lawyers, dentists, and medical doctors. But she does not identify work as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, builders, garbage collectors and so on as the major male-dominated ones. It is a blind eye to what men really do because it is focused on the things women want. This blindness is repeated time and time again. She does not use "patriarchy" much, but she does use "male definition"(and other negative groupings of maleness) when talking about the traditional family. She even makes the claim that feminism is not that much communism because communism was a male revolution, rather - they should go back to Marx and take it further to also include women. To hell with private property, we need communal beta properties. There is not an argument against communism, because feminism is communism as much as any communist or socialist inspired movement. The ideology does not disappear magically because of a different idea of what genders should be involved, neither does it become any better.
One of the most enjoyable chapters is the case study of the Project Athena at West Point, the first women to enroll in military training. But here also the bias is clear. When she discusses the thing about women not managing to do the pull-ups required she goes statistical to say that for every one girl who did not manage to do it, there were three boys. No, that is to say - it's not that bad for the girls. But if she would have been fair, the ratio would have to be something like 1 girl for every 12 boys. I feel that most of the book have this bias, unable to go into a back an forth with arguments rather disguising the opposition as bad, period. That goes also for the on that times ongoing Equal Rights Amendment. She writes a lot about it, and she mentions a lot about those wrong-thinking Moral Majority people - but she doe snot mention their argument. Because feminism is for the ERA, it has to be right. Because feminism is for abortion rights, it has to be right.
That is why she also include a little note given to her, about those anti-ERA demonstrators. That they look so angry, and that anger is hate - so much hate and so little love. So, it all is reduced to how they look while they demonstrate a bad piece of legislation. Go figure. Feminism has not improved a bit since.
All that aside, the writing flows well, and I would put it up there as one of the better feminist books from the time for the cause of feminism I've read so far.
April 16, 2016
Initially I thought that maybe I was being too hard on this book, that maybe it was just dated (and that is bound to happen). But it's more than that.
It is that it is so caught up in a hazy romance with essentialist (and heterosexist) ideas of what it means to be a woman and a wife and a mother that it ignores many realities of many women. Apparently we all need to confront that we are not complete people without being wives and mothers and that on some level we yearn to do more than half of the child rearing.
It is that women lawyers as an example of the career woman (described in terms that since have eveolved into what we now call neoliberalism) are uncritically presented as "the best and the brightest", women soldiers (in what was in some ways the strongest chapter in the book) are also romanticised.
It is that any perspective of women of colour is either missing, dismissed, side-lined or swiped at. Ditto queer women. Ditto any woman who capitalism isn't really working for.
It is a casual assumption that the reader is American (white middle-class American) without any sort of openness about the narrowness of this view which might redeem it. Absolute and absolutist statements are made as if this is true for everyone buying into unfortunate stereotypes about Americans not realising the rest of the world is real.
It is a romanticising of men as somehow in the centre of all our hopes and dreams and personhood. I would agree with getting rid of binaries as Friedan pays constant and repetitive lip-service to, except in the case of this book it seems to mean- not using powerful critiques and real shifts to destabilise binaries for real but naively trusting that difference no longer matters and embracing a sort of dangerous gut-feeling individualism, where people living in self-contradictory ways (see chapter 6 for example) and talking themselves out of their rights are somehow more balanced, and managing to somehow magically reconcile opposites (familial ideology, individual ideology) just by living the opposite of what they say (I'd call that delusion myself, not balance).
I agree that women should not have to give up kinship and collective possibility and turn themselves into horrid individuals which I think Friedan is trying to say, only she comes across as saying "we can be horrid individuals and still serve men and children" which I think gets both sides of the dilemma wrong. There should be women-friendly families. There should be the potential to nurture and be nurtured, to relate and be secure. SURE. But the assumption that this has to happen within a narrowly heterosexual family unit and never in any other way is a dangerous one. Also the assumption that we unconditionally need men and owe men our love and half our personhood (regardless of their support or not of the women's movement) ...well the kindest word I can think of for that is once again "naive".
The dismissive stuff in the UN section about any woman not from the US (apart from a couple of other brave white first-worlders) about how these women from "other" places blocked any "Real" feminist discussion by having political and economic axes to grind also was possibly the lowest point of the whole book.
I founds some of the stuff on masculinities in the army very, very interesting (especially where the older soldiers were more nuanced and open to change than the younger, less experienced ones. I did wonder how she remembered these often detailed conversations, possibly through having a good memory coupled with very detailed journalisng habits I suppose. Either that or she made her data up.
I used to think rules around academic writing were silly but I missed the rigour and discipline of real research in this book. I would have appreciated some links to other theorists (critically if she liked) and I also would have liked more logic in how she set out the information (less round and round in at times self-contradicting and tediously repetitive circles). Some methodology about how she got the data and what made this meaningful (I mean really it was just memoirs with her making generalisations about "Everybody" based on her impressions from people she had met...or that was how it came across. Even journalists I think do more research than this!
I think the book needed to be a lot shorter, tighter, more clearly and logically argued and then I could better agree or disagree with it (instead of being left with a mess of some stuff that I think may be good points but which is buried in privilege, assumptions and waffle). And at the end of the day (and somewhat tragically) there is a recreation or re-buying back into some sort of feminine mystique in the book.
Guess I don't always love the "feminist" books!
It is that it is so caught up in a hazy romance with essentialist (and heterosexist) ideas of what it means to be a woman and a wife and a mother that it ignores many realities of many women. Apparently we all need to confront that we are not complete people without being wives and mothers and that on some level we yearn to do more than half of the child rearing.
It is that women lawyers as an example of the career woman (described in terms that since have eveolved into what we now call neoliberalism) are uncritically presented as "the best and the brightest", women soldiers (in what was in some ways the strongest chapter in the book) are also romanticised.
It is that any perspective of women of colour is either missing, dismissed, side-lined or swiped at. Ditto queer women. Ditto any woman who capitalism isn't really working for.
It is a casual assumption that the reader is American (white middle-class American) without any sort of openness about the narrowness of this view which might redeem it. Absolute and absolutist statements are made as if this is true for everyone buying into unfortunate stereotypes about Americans not realising the rest of the world is real.
It is a romanticising of men as somehow in the centre of all our hopes and dreams and personhood. I would agree with getting rid of binaries as Friedan pays constant and repetitive lip-service to, except in the case of this book it seems to mean- not using powerful critiques and real shifts to destabilise binaries for real but naively trusting that difference no longer matters and embracing a sort of dangerous gut-feeling individualism, where people living in self-contradictory ways (see chapter 6 for example) and talking themselves out of their rights are somehow more balanced, and managing to somehow magically reconcile opposites (familial ideology, individual ideology) just by living the opposite of what they say (I'd call that delusion myself, not balance).
I agree that women should not have to give up kinship and collective possibility and turn themselves into horrid individuals which I think Friedan is trying to say, only she comes across as saying "we can be horrid individuals and still serve men and children" which I think gets both sides of the dilemma wrong. There should be women-friendly families. There should be the potential to nurture and be nurtured, to relate and be secure. SURE. But the assumption that this has to happen within a narrowly heterosexual family unit and never in any other way is a dangerous one. Also the assumption that we unconditionally need men and owe men our love and half our personhood (regardless of their support or not of the women's movement) ...well the kindest word I can think of for that is once again "naive".
The dismissive stuff in the UN section about any woman not from the US (apart from a couple of other brave white first-worlders) about how these women from "other" places blocked any "Real" feminist discussion by having political and economic axes to grind also was possibly the lowest point of the whole book.
I founds some of the stuff on masculinities in the army very, very interesting (especially where the older soldiers were more nuanced and open to change than the younger, less experienced ones. I did wonder how she remembered these often detailed conversations, possibly through having a good memory coupled with very detailed journalisng habits I suppose. Either that or she made her data up.
I used to think rules around academic writing were silly but I missed the rigour and discipline of real research in this book. I would have appreciated some links to other theorists (critically if she liked) and I also would have liked more logic in how she set out the information (less round and round in at times self-contradicting and tediously repetitive circles). Some methodology about how she got the data and what made this meaningful (I mean really it was just memoirs with her making generalisations about "Everybody" based on her impressions from people she had met...or that was how it came across. Even journalists I think do more research than this!
I think the book needed to be a lot shorter, tighter, more clearly and logically argued and then I could better agree or disagree with it (instead of being left with a mess of some stuff that I think may be good points but which is buried in privilege, assumptions and waffle). And at the end of the day (and somewhat tragically) there is a recreation or re-buying back into some sort of feminine mystique in the book.
Guess I don't always love the "feminist" books!
February 5, 2016
The title tells - this is about the second stage, when women felt reassured enough to make a choice to be home makers.
May 22, 2024
Is This An Overview?
The first stage was about women getting power parity with men. Showing that women can do more than just be housewives. But as women entered the workforce, there was a clash between work and family. Between work and any other pursuits. The second stage is about the changing roles of work and family, to find better alternative ways on how to be. The second stage is about reconciling demands of independence with emotional needs.
Women and men need each other for emotional, financial, and other needs. When someone is dependent on someone else, psychological insecurities develop that make any relationship difficult. Those who lack independence, tend to lack confidence in themselves, and take out their frustrations on the one they are dependent on. When a woman performed many household tasks and participated in supporting the man’s ambition, women did not receive the monetary benefits or recognition for their efforts, while the men could not function without the support. When the man was the sole monetary earner, the man was extremely anxious about job prospects, forcing them to stay at terrible jobs. When men and women share the monetary, family, and emotional burdens, they have higher chances of economic survival and live more fulfilling lives.
Caveats?
This is a sensitive topic that shares the complexity of the situation. The second stage came about through new demands on social and economic life that needed a response. As society changes, so must the responses. Each society, each era, need to find their own responses to their different situations.
There are passages with various diverse perspectives that provide evidence for claims. They can provide addition explanations, but can lack a systemic analysis.
The first stage was about women getting power parity with men. Showing that women can do more than just be housewives. But as women entered the workforce, there was a clash between work and family. Between work and any other pursuits. The second stage is about the changing roles of work and family, to find better alternative ways on how to be. The second stage is about reconciling demands of independence with emotional needs.
Women and men need each other for emotional, financial, and other needs. When someone is dependent on someone else, psychological insecurities develop that make any relationship difficult. Those who lack independence, tend to lack confidence in themselves, and take out their frustrations on the one they are dependent on. When a woman performed many household tasks and participated in supporting the man’s ambition, women did not receive the monetary benefits or recognition for their efforts, while the men could not function without the support. When the man was the sole monetary earner, the man was extremely anxious about job prospects, forcing them to stay at terrible jobs. When men and women share the monetary, family, and emotional burdens, they have higher chances of economic survival and live more fulfilling lives.
Caveats?
This is a sensitive topic that shares the complexity of the situation. The second stage came about through new demands on social and economic life that needed a response. As society changes, so must the responses. Each society, each era, need to find their own responses to their different situations.
There are passages with various diverse perspectives that provide evidence for claims. They can provide addition explanations, but can lack a systemic analysis.
July 16, 2009
An early (and unfortunately) overlooked look at feminism & motherhood and the family. I wrote about my reaction to it .
January 9, 2008
I found this book irrelevant to me, a woman of color
Read
July 23, 2008social change,20th century,American history,women history,feminism,sexual equality,women's movement
August 31, 2008
This is what is need now and probably then too. Lucklly those crazy hippy moms raised boys who weren't limted by being men
August 21, 2014
Explica moitas cousas que en The Femenine Mystique se deixa atrás (o diver é que ese non o lin)
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