Washington Post
She The People
Betty Friedan and black women: Is it
time for a second look?
By Michelle Bernard
Feb. 21, 2013 at 5:40 a.m. PST
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan published in 1963.
Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” turned 50 this week. At the time of its
publication, “Singletons” (circa 1963 defined as an unma
ied woman) did not have a
legal right to birth control. Ma
ied women did not have equal access to credit. In some
states, ma
ied women could not get a job without the permission of their
husbands. Occupational segregation was the norm. The wage gap was more like a wage
canyon. Sexual harassment of women in the workplace was not yet legally
actionable. Abortion was illegal. Every state in the nation required “fault-based”
grounds for divorce. Spousal rape was not a crime in most states.
All of this changed for all American women in the wake of Friedan’s tome. Second wave
feminism was born. The National Organization for Women was founded. The call for
equality and women’s rights would resound in every cell of the American body politic.
All American women owe Friedan a debt of gratitude.
Yet, despite all of the above, as an African American woman, I can say that I have never
met a black woman who admits to having read “The Feminine Mystique.” I have never
heard a black woman of a certain age recite with the nostalgia what I refer to as “the
Friedan anthem” – “The Problem with No Name.”
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I have met, know, respect, and deeply admire countless white women of a certain stature
and age who state that when they read the following words in Friedan’s book, they felt
she was speaking to them and that they had been delivered:
“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American
women. It was a strange sti
ing, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that
women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each
subu
an wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for
groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her
children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night-
she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question –‘Is this all?’”
In a 2011 interview, Stephanie Coontz, author of “A Strange Sti
ing: The Feminine
Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s,” said that “One woman [she]
interviewed, now a well-known academic, described reading the book and so
ing with
elief, then finally getting up and flushing her tranquilizers down the drain.”
On the 50th anniversary of “The Feminine Mystique,” I can’t help but ask where are the
voices of the millions of black and working class women who have fought against gender
and race discrimination in cele
ating Friedan. Why have we not seen a groundswell of
lack and working class women standing up to cele
ate the many achievements in
women’s liberty that were wrought as a result of Friedan’s work? And even more
importantly, why is it that despite all of the battles that all American women have had to
fight in order to share equally in the pursuit of the American dream with our
testosterone-laden partners, so few black women call themselves feminists? Why is it
that so few of us have had so little to do with second wave feminism?
Admittedly, I have not read “The Feminine Mystique.” As a college student, and even as
law student who devoured books and law review articles about feminist legal theory and
the status of women in the law for fun, I chose not to read it because I knew it did not
include the lives of African American women.
I, like many of my African American classmates at that time, believed that by failing to
include the lives of African American women, “The Feminine Mystique” could
not possibly speak to the needs of African American women of our mothers’ generation,
let alone our own.
Whether poverty-stricken, working class, middle class, or wealthy, many of the black
women of my generation and that of our foremothers mistakenly believed that
Friedan’s work spoke only to a privileged class of white women who had nothing better
to do than whine about how difficult life was as a stay at home mother.
Ma
ied or not, many of our foremothers and many women of my generation were
working class women for whom work outside of the home was a financial
necessity. Ma
ied or not, many of our foremothers were middle class women who
chose to work outside the home simply because they wished to do so. Ma
ied or not,
there were, by any standard, wealthy African American women who made a decision to
stay at home while others made a decision to work outside the home.
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www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article59.htm
Yet for all of these black women, there were two major problems that had to be
confronted — being black and being a woman at a time when there were virtually no
meaningful legal protections against race or gender discrimination.
Coontz maintains that the omission of African American women in Friedan’s book was:
“[A] glaring omission, all the sadder because Friedan herself had led fights
against segregated housing. Some people have argued that black women would
have loved to be homemakers, and that’s the weakness in Friedan’s defense of
meaningful work for women. This is not the case, however. Yes, many black
wives and mothers had to work, and at jobs that were truly ho
ible. But the
upper middle-class wives and mothers who were least likely to have to work for
financial necessity were already long before this was also true of white women the
most likely to work, suggesting that something more than dire necessity was
involved. And black leaders of both sexes had a long tradition of supporting
women’s roles as co-providers for their families and as activist leaders of the
community. I argue that although Friedan’s discussion of work was indeed
elitist, the biggest problem with her book’s neglect of black women is that she
missed the chance to show her white middle-class audience that some women
were able to combine their identities as wives, mothers, family co-providers, and
activists with interests beyond the home.”
I would argue that Friedan’s exclusion of the lives of black women in “The Feminine
Mystique” unintentionally set us down a path that divided us as sisters. Fifty years later,
many of those who were excluded from this book of such monumental importance
would not feel comfortable calling themselves feminists. Despite our disdain for all
forms of discrimination, we were not sisters in the movement. We were on our own in
fighting these battles. I am not sure it had to be this way.
Blackfeminism.wordpress.com
Wednesday, I participated in a discussion on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show about the
elevance today of “The Feminine Mystique” and the ongoing debate over gender
equality at work and at home. A woman who identified herself as Friedan’s personal
assistant until the day she died called in to the show. From her comments, one could
http:
www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article59.htm
http:
thedianerehmshow.org/shows/ XXXXXXXXXX/fifty-years-after-feminine-mystique
infer that it was her opinion that Friedan didn’t intentionally exclude black women from
her book. Whether unintentionally excluded or omitted from the book, the lives of
African American women are not a part of “The Feminine Mystique”.
Today, I would argue that Friedan’s unintentional exclusion of African American women
in “The Feminine Mystique” was in fact a gift because it might be what led to the
development of a black feminist movement and scholarship in the area of black feminist
thought.
So this week, this African American woman has changed her tune. I purchased my first
copy of “The Feminine Mystique.” I am cele
ating all the gifts that Friedan
ought all
American women. But while I cele
ate Friedan, I also will cele
ate bell hooks, author
of “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist , Thinking Black” and “Ain’t I A Woman: Black
Women and Feminism. ”
I am cele
ating all of the women who fought the battles that have allowed women of my
generation, black and white, to more fully realize the American Dream.
Michelle D. Bernard is the president and CEO of the Bernard Center for Women,
Politics & Public Policy. Follow her on Twitter @michellebernard.
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Betty Friedan and black women: Is it time for a second look?