The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan - Part 4

The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan - Part 4

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 99

  April 9, 2017 

Book 31 - The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan (1997)
 Part 4 - pages 126-149
Reading Time - 1 hour

I had to scale back my reading of this book. I was trying to get 50 pages done in a session but given the density of the text... it was taking a couple of hours! Sooo... we're down to a chapter a day.

In this section, Friedan takes us through a romp of something called Functionalism.... which was apparently just a word game that allowed the prejudices of social scientists to show up. Basically, the sex roles defined a person. Women's function was to bear children, ergo, that was their role in life. Women were dependent and transferred their dependence from their parents to their husbands when they got married. Women were simply more infantile. (seriously....) Sociologists now admit that functionalism was rather embarrassing but... that was after it had already impacted a whole bunch of women.

Essentially, "woman is what society says she is". Margaret Mead is invoked here... she did some great work but she also had some weird ideas (she was an anthropologist who studied "primitive" tribes) which blurred the glorification of women in the female role. To me... it sounds rather like they came with an idea and then looked for evidence to support their idea. Which is NOT the scientific method. But then... this was the social sciences. The thing was... anyone who didn't fit their theories of how men and women "should" be was deemed as aberrant. Soooo... yes... functionalism was an embarrassment but then afterwards people still quoted it based on their own prejudices...