Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism

This biography of Betty Friedan traces the development of her feminist outlook from her childhood in Illinois to her marriage. Horowitz offers a reading of "The Feminine Mystique" and argues that the roots of Friedan's feminism run deeper than she has led us to believe. The links between the "Popular Front" of feminism of the "Old Left" and the "New Left" feminism of the 1960s is delineated, thereby casting doubt on the claims of novelty that many have made about social movements of the 1960s. He illuminates important details by mining everything from her papers while a student as Smith College, to her articles for the labour press. Horowitz advances the historiography with descriptions of women's experiences of left-wing politics and culture in the 1940s and 1950s and by limning Friedan's place within that context.