Betty Friedan's Essay 'The Problem That Has No Name'

Many women of the mid to late 1950’s were silently unhappy with their lives as homemakers. Although careers for women outside the home were nonexistent at this time, women felt disregarded by the accepted division of labor and commitment. They did not choose this, nor did they have influence over it. In today’s society, nearly fifty years later, there is an unusual, but interrelated problem taking place. It’s not so much the traditional confines and ideas of what it means to be a woman, a housewife, and mother that are affecting women today, but the stress of balancing a career and a family at the same time. Thus, in today’s society, women are struggling to manage a career with being a mother and housewife, while, at the same time, being burdened with too many responsibilities. Furthermore, the limitations women had, and currently have, both similar, yet different, signify discontentment between women of today and women in the 1950’s.
Betty Friedan’s, essay The Problem That Has No Name, addresses that during the middle of the twentieth century, “books and articles by experts …show more content…
Conflicts between work and family, as well as stresses supporting conventional gender roles, suggest that “homemakers will be happier than working wives (Treas, Lippe, and Tai, 116).” Conversely, Treas states, “arguments [made about] working women [shows they are] happier than homemakers, focus on the benefits of employment, including role expansion, workplace social networks, earned income, and personal fulfillment (Treas, Lippe, and Tai, 116).” Women are expected to work; however, because they still take on the primary responsibility of caring for the children and family, they find themselves trapped in low-paid and low-status jobs. As a result of this, women tend to find part-time jobs to make it easier to juggle both work and caring for the