The Women’s Movement of the 1960s



The Women’s Movement of the 1960s Name ___________________________

Read each paragraph below and Mark It Up! Following each section identify its main idea. Use this to help you respond to the questions at the end.

Main Idea:

Main Idea:

Main Idea:

Main Idea:

Response Questions

1. Based on what you read, how do you feel women were viewed by

a. Society in general -

b. Themselves -

c. Betty Friedan –

2. Whom do you think Friedan believed would read her book? Why?

3. What might opponents to Freidan say about the beliefs expressed in this book? Why?

4. In today’s culture, how do you feel women are viewed by

a. Society in general -

b. Themselves -

c. Betty Friedan (if she were alive) –

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“The suburban housewife—she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife—freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment….”

If the woman had a problem in the 1950's and 1960's, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought…. She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself…”

“…What happened to women is part of what happened to all of us in the years after the war. We found excuses for not facing the problems we once had the courage to face. The American spirit fell into a strange sleep…Women went home again just as men shrugged off the bomb, forgot the concentration camps, condoned corruption, and fell into hapless conformity; just as the thinkers avoided the complex larger problems of the postwar world…It was easier to look for Freudian…roots in man’s bevanior, his ideas, and his wars than to look critically at this society and act constructively to right its wrongs.”

“When the mystique took over,…a new breed of women came to the suburbs. They were looking for sanctuary; they were perfectly willing to accept the suburban community as they found it (their only problem was “how to fit in”); they were perfectly willing to fill their days with the trivia of housewifery. Women of this kind, and most of those that I interviewed were of the post-1950 college generation, refuse to take policy-making positions in community organizations; they will only collect for Red Cross or March of Dimes or Scouts or be den mothers or take lesser PTA jobs…

EXPERTS FROM THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE

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