This article examines the many wayward turns taken by various factions of feminism and offers a new paradigm. Section I covers background; Section II explains a realistic alternative; Section III discusses genuine universalism (rather than a gender-based apartheid) where men and women live together happily and like it. The article concludes with an authentic discussion of what most women really want.
Once again, Betty Friedan has challenged her readers to rethink the context within which they view both the relations of the sexes and the relations of the marketplace.
Betty Friedan launches a new revolution with this powerful, bestselling book breaking through the American mystique of aging as decline. Through hundreds of interviews, Friedan confronts our denial and demolishes society's compassionate contempt--to offer a vision of what can be embraced.
Most urban people are familiar with the word Feminism, but the understanding of it remains vague and there is a general rejection of its relevance in the familial context. In reality, feminism wants you to be whoever you are but with a political consciousness. You want to be a feminist because you want to be exactly who you are. This book claims to be a complete guide regarding Feminism and its changing meanings. It tells you about the history of Feminism, theoretical perspectives on Feminism, various feminist theories like Liberal, Radical, Marxist, Psychoanalytical, Existential, Cultural, Lesbian, Eco, Post-Modern Feminism, Post-Feminism, Black-Feminism, French Feministic theory, etc. It also discusses some popular terms regarding Feminism Amazon Feminism, Moderate Feminism, Materialist, Pop, Gender Sex-Positive Feminism, Difference Feminism, Academic Feminism, etc. The major portion of this book presents some Feminists like Simon de Beauvoir, Kate Millett, Betty Friedan, Elain Showalter, Helen Cixous, Juliet Mitchell, Eli Zaretsky, etc. It also discusses some major books on feminist theories and issues. Dr. Tandon has beautifully covered new issues like Masculism, Feminist Jurisprudence, Mothering a Feminist Concern, Feminity vs Masculanity, Feminism in Indian Scenario, etc. In a nutshell, this book answers almost all the queries of readers about Feminism.
The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.
A new portrait of Betty Friedan, the author and activist acclaimed as the mother of second-wave feminism “A lucid portrait of Friedan as a bold yet flawed advocate for women’s equality.”—Publishers Weekly The feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan (1921–2006), pathbreaking author of The Feminine Mystique, was powerful and polarizing. In this biography, the first in more than twenty years, Rachel Shteir draws on Friedan’s papers and on interviews with family, colleagues, and friends to create a nuanced portrait. Friedan, born Bettye Naomi Goldstein, chafed at society’s restrictions from a young age. As a journalist she covered racism, sexism, labor, class inequality, and anti-Semitism. As a wife and mother, she struggled to balance her work and homemaking. Her malaise as a housewife and her research into the feelings of other women resulted in The Feminine Mystique (1963), which made her a celebrity. Using her influence, Friedan cofounded the National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the National Association to Repeal Abortion Laws. She fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, universal childcare, and workplace protections for mothers, but she disagreed with the women’s liberation movement over “sexual politics.” Her volatility and public conflicts fractured key relationships. Shteir considers how Friedan’s Judaism was essential to her feminism, presenting a new Friedan for a new era.
In Unbending Gender, Joan Williams takes a hard look at the state of feminism in America. Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power.Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.
At last Betty Friedan herself speaks about her life and career. With the same unsparing frankness that made The Feminine Mystique one of the most influential books of our era, Friedan looks back and tells us what it took -- and what it cost -- to change the world. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, started the women's movement it sold more than four million copies and was recently named one of the one hundred most important books of the century. In Life So Far, Friedan takes us on an intimate journey through her life -- a lonely childhood in Peoria, Illinois salvation at Smith College her days as a labor reporter for a union newspaper in New York (from which she was dismissed when she became pregnant) unfulfilling and painful years as a suburban housewife finding great joy as a mother and writing The Feminine Mystique, which grew out of a survey of her Smith classmates and started it all. Friedan chronicles the secret underground of women in Washington, D.C., who drafted her in the early 1960s to spearhead an "NAACP" for women, and recounts the courage of many, including some Catholic nuns who played a brave part in those early days of NOW, the National Organization for Women. Friedan's feminist thinking, a philosophy of evolution, is reflected throughout her book. She recognized early that the women's movement would falter if institutions did not change to reflect the new realities of women's lives, and she fought to keep the movement practical and free of extremism, including "man-hating." She describes candidly the movement's political infighting that brought her to the point of legal action and resulted in a long breach with fellow leaders Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug. Friedan is frank about her twenty-two-year marriage to Carl Friedan, an advertising entrepreneur. She writes about the explosive cycle of drinking, arguing, and physical battering she endured and explores her prolonged inability to leave the marriage. (They are now friends and the grandparents of nine.) Friedan was not only pivotal in the founding of NOW, she was also the driving force behind the creation of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), and the First Women's Bank and Trust Company. She made history by introducing the issue of sex discrimination as an argument against the ratification of a Supreme Court nominee. She convinced the Secretary General of the United Nations to declare 1975 the International Year of the Woman. In this volume, Friedan brings to extraordinary life her bold and contentious leadership in the movement. She lectures, writes, leads think tanks, and organizes women and men to work together in political, legal, and social battles on behalf of women's rights.--From publisher description.
When Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984, it was welcomed and praised by feminist thinkers who wanted a new vision. Even so, individual readers frequently found the theory "unsettling" or "provocative." Today, the blueprint for feminist movement presented in the book remains as provocative and relevant as ever. Written in hooks's characteristic direct style, Feminist Theory embodies the hope that feminists can find a common language to spread the word and create a mass, global feminist movement.
