Demystifying the 50th Anniversary of “The Feminine Mystique”

Next week at ALOUD we’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. To get ready for this retrospective on the struggle for gender equality, we were curious to see how the media is covering the impact of this groundbreaking book 50 years later. Here’s a rundown of some recent conversations on The Feminine Mystique, as well as a few interesting perspectives on women’s issues from the panelists who will be joining the ALOUD program.

–Over at Slate’s “DoubleX Gabfest Podcast,” panelist Hanna Rosin (and DoubleX’s founding editor), speaks with Noreen Malone and Emily Yoffe about the The Feminine Mystique, with a little love talk and Dear Prudence thrown in for good measure.

And here’s a link to Rosin’s article in The Atlantic, “The End of Men,” about gender role reversals in the workforce, which she later turned into a book that she’ll be signing after the ALOUD program next week.

The New York Times also ran a recent roundtable discussion on The Feminine Mystique with Gail Collins, who wrote the new introduction for the book.

–In the article, “The Bitch Was Onto Something: A Re-Reading of The Feminine Mystique,” Andi Zeisler gives a literary rundown of the book for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

–Lynn Neary at NPR asks if The Feminine Mystique still roars. Listen to her answer here.

–Panelist Kathy Spillar is the executive editor Ms. Magazine. Here are her numerous articles on gender topics from Roe v. Wade to voting rights.

–Learn from panelist Carol Downer’s women’s health website and read about her thoughts on abortion rights.

–Watch panelist Tani Ikeda’s short documentary Turn of the Harvest about a struggling couple in rural China. Ikeda is also the co-founder of imMEDIAte Justice.

We would love to hear your thoughts on Betty Friedan’s work. Please leave a comment below about where you think the women’s movement is headed in the next 50 years.

Share on