ABSTRACT
The "feminine mystique, as Friedan defined it, was an ideology perpetrated in the post-World War II period to return women to what a male-dominated society liked to think of as their "rightful place." As is often the case with germinal thinkers, Betty Friedan did not set out to write The Feminine Mystique but simply to collect some survey data about her graduating class of 1942, which had left college in the middle of World War II. It is tempting to try challenging Friedans conspiracy theory. As mentioned, anthropologists show that after a war there is an almost atavistic urge to repopulate. A centerpiece in Friedan's analysis of the origins and social control function of the feminine mystique was her treatment of the impact of Freudianism on postwar thinking about women and gender roles. Betty Friedan was the first but by no means the last of a whole line of feminists to take on Freud and his theorizing about women.
