Labor and Women's Liberation: Popular Readings of The Feminine Mystique

Abstract

This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment and feminism by investigating Betty Friedan's classic book, The Feminine Mystique, and its popular uptake. Analysis illustrates that The Feminine Mystique envisioned women finding fulfillment not in corporate careers but instead in civic-minded pursuits and, more importantly, through developing thoughtful liberal subjectivity. In contrast, recent mainstream news referencing the book framed it as feminism's origin, a clarion call to work, and used these connections to condemn all feminism as bourgeois careerism. The analysis argues that antifeminist and neoliberal ideologies color contemporary uses of the text, narrowing the range of issues addressed by the book and by women's liberation. Ultimately, the article contends that feminists should reclaim the articulation of feminist and labor politics in Friedan's book in order to contest current constructions of neoliberal governmentality.

Keywords:

• women and labor
• antifeminism
• neoliberalism