In her book, “The Feminine Mystique”, Betty Friedan states, “In almost every professional field, in business and in the arts and sciences, women are still treated as second-class citizens”. Her book was published in 1963, and although we have come a long way since then as women in the workforce, we still have a long way to go. According to U.S Department of Labor’s website, women earn 82 cents for every one dollar that a man earns. I believe this is due to several factors. Without researching it I would guess that women are less likely to ask for a raise and more likely to be undervalued by their male counterparts and superiors. That’s been my own experience, at least.
Friedan discusses “the feminine mystique” as a step backwards for women. She sees first wave feminists as hanging up their coat after earning the right to vote. Now, women have been brainwashed by men into thinking that their true nature or purpose is as wives and mothers in the kitchen. To embrace this nature is the only way for women to be happy and fulfilled. She also speaks of “the problem”, which is essentially the general dissatisfaction amongst housewives. Women across America were unfulfilled by their limiting roles and lack of autonomy.
Pat Mainardi’s “The Politics of Housework”, elaborates on the frustration felt at having to bear the responsibility of doing all the housework, while men do none. She lists all of the excuse’s her husband has made as to why he can’t pull his own weight, which today is referred to as “weaponized incompetence”. Isabella Celentano’s snapshot sums up the way Mainardi feels. A woman is pictured ironing clothes with the text, “Seriously! Am I the ONLY one that can see the trash overflowing, the dirty dishes in the sink, the laundry piled up and the empty toilet paper roll?”
I’ve made excuses for some men’s perceived inability to see or be bothered by dirt in the way that women are. Of course, the stereotype is not always true but often it lines up due to the way men and women have been socialized differently. The last article, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm”, by Anne Koedt was eye opening to say the least. Koedt exposes the fallacy of the vaginal orgasm and explains that women’s sexuality has been misunderstood and ignored by male experts like Freud who have tried to shame women for their failure to fit into a penis centered sexual fallacy that is the vaginal orgasm.
Reading about Freud’s description of the vaginal orgasm being something that only mature women are capable of having really made my blood boil because I have read this theory before and had no idea that it came from Freud. It clearly should have been debunked ten times over but somehow, it’s still circulated as fact. The way that Koedt draws parallels between men’s lack of understanding of female anatomy to sexism is something that I found really eye opening. I hadn’t looked at it quite that way before. The sad truth is that men are often socialized to put their own needs first inside and outside of the bedroom.
