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Friedan also argued that the feminine mystique hurt women both personally and professionally, and she held that, for women as well as for men, identity was largely cultivated through a sense of personal achievement, primarily through a career. Human-potential psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, popular during the late 1950s and early ’60s, influenced Friedan’s claim that the feminine mystique denied women their “basic human need to grow.” Because that basic need for development was stunted, Friedan maintained, women would remain unhappy, and children would grow up with unfulfilled and neurotic mothers. Friedan deemed that unhappiness and inability to live up to the feminine mystique the “problem that has no name.” Friedan’s critique Friedan, however, noted that many housewives were unsatisfied with their lives but had difficulty articulating their feelings. Further, prevailing attitudes held that “truly feminine” women had no desire for higher education, careers, or a political voice rather, they found complete fulfillment in the domestic sphere.
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She coined the term feminine mystique to describe the societal assumption that women could find fulfillment through housework, marriage, sexual passivity, and child rearing alone. The Feminine Mystique, a landmark book by feminist Betty Friedan published in 1963 that described the pervasive dissatisfaction among women in mainstream American society in the post- World War II period.
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