So she decided to take her research several steps further, and The Feminine Mystique was born. It was during this project that she realized many of the women with whom she had graduated from school weren’t very happy in their position of housewife - "the problem that has no name," as she called it. The inspiration behind The Feminine Mystique came to be when, for an upcoming reunion of her Smith College class, Friedan was asked to survey what everyone had been up to since graduation. The book, which dared to question the happiness (or as it was, the unhappiness) of housewives, among other aspects of femininity, is often credited with launching the second-wave of feminism. Although it was the 1960s and times were "a-changin’," the conventional standards to which women had been tied were only beginning to be challenged. February 19 marks the 52nd anniversary of the day that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique hit bookstores.
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