In 1960, Betty Friedan wrote a magazine article called "Women Are People, Too" that appeared in Good Housekeeping. The essay was a precursor to her classic feminist book The Feminine Mystique. Betty Friedan's thoughts and reflections in the Good Housekeeping piece were a product of several years of research that led eventually to the 1963 publication of her best-seller. The very title of "Women are People, Too" stated an idea that should be obvious but that many readers needed to hear.
"Is This All?"
Betty Friedan's "Women Are People, Too" article began in much the same way The Feminine Mystique begins. The first paragraph referred to the "complex and elusive problem" which did not - yet? - have a psychological term to describe it. The Feminine Mystique made famous that "problem that has no name," the suffering common to many women forced into a constructed role of Occupation: Housewife.
The opening paragraph of "Women Are People, Too" also mentioned that silent question countless women were asking themselves as they made the beds, chauffeured the children and purchased groceries and drapes: "Is this all?"
Sources of Discontent
Like The Feminine Mystique would do, "Women Are People, Too" implicated the magazines and books that for 20 years or more had disseminated messages about the "role" of women. The role, according to society's powerful voices, was to seek fulfillment as wives/mothers/homemakers. In her article, Betty Friedan criticized "the voices of Freudian sophistication" that told women their frustrations were caused by their education; in The Feminine Mystique she would expand on this in a chapter titled "The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud."
Betty Friedan had been interviewing women and pursuing her hypothesis about their discontent since her survey of Smith College classmates at the time of their 15-year reunion. In her Good Housekeeping essay, she wrote that she had interviewed thousands of women who felt empty, useless and incomplete.
Seeking Fulfillment
What Betty Friedan called for in her magazine piece was acknowledgement of the simple truth that women should seek their own personal fulfillment. They can't live through their husbands and children, she wrote, but they have to ask the "right questions" in order to begin the search for self-fulfillment.
Far from urging women to reject home and family, the essay called for women to be complete people. Betty Friedan asked "why should a woman's fulfillment be the same as a man's? Or why should it be like that of any other woman?" She also expressed optimism about the great unknown of what women could be once they could finally ask these questions and be free to become themselves.
Readers reacted to "Women Are People, Too!" with a flood of letters that included relief, gratitude, anger and personal tales of soul-searching. Betty Friedan would later receive letters filled with similar emotions in response to The Feminine Mystique.