The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan [196]
There are, of course, a number of practical problems involved in making a serious professional commitment. But somehow those problems only seem insurmountable when a woman is still half-submerged in the false dilemmas and guilts of the feminine mystique—or when her desire for “something more” is only phantasy, and she is unwilling to make the necessary effort. Over and over, women told me that the crucial step for them was simply to take the first trip to the alumnae employment agency, or to send for the application for teacher certification, or to make appointments with former job contacts in the city. It is amazing how many obstacles and rationalizations the feminine mystique can throw up to keep a woman from making that trip or writing that letter.
One suburban housewife I knew had once been a newspaper woman, but she was sure she could never get that kind of job again; she had been away too long. And, of course, she couldn’t really leave her children (who, by then, were all in school during the day). As it turned out, when she finally decided to do something about it, she found an excellent job in her old field after only two trips into the city. Another woman, a psychiatric social worker, said that she could not take a regular agency job, only volunteer jobs without deadlines that she could put down when she felt like it, because she could not count on a cleaning woman. Actually, if she had hired a cleaning woman, which many of her neighbors were doing for much less reason, she would have had to commit herself to the kind of assignments that would have been a real test of her ability. Obviously she was afraid of such a test.
A great many suburban housewives today step back from, or give up, volunteer activity, art, or job at the very point when all that is needed is a more serious commitment. The PTA leader won’t run for the school board. The League of Women Voters’ leader is afraid to move on into the rough mainstream of her political party. “Women can’t get a policy-making role,” she says. “I’m not going to lick stamps.” Of course, it would require more effort for her to win a policy-making role in her party against the prejudices and the competition of the men.
Some women take the jobs but do not make the necessary new life plan. I interviewed two women of ability, both of whom were bored as housewives and both of whom got jobs in the same research institute. They loved the increasingly challenging work, and were quickly promoted. But, in their thirties, after ten years as housewives, they earned very little money. The first woman, clearly recognizing the future this work held for her, spent virtually her entire salary on a three-day-a-week cleaning woman. The second woman, who felt her work was justified only if it “helped out with family expenses,” would not spend any money for cleaning help. Nor did she consider asking her husband and children to help out with household chores, or save time by ordering groceries by phone and sending the laundry out. She quit her job after a year from sheer exhaustion. The first woman, who made the necessary household changes and sacrifices, today, at thirty-eight, has one of the leading jobs at the institute and makes a substantial contribution to her family’s income, over and above what she pays for her part-time household help. The second, after two weeks of “rest,” began to suffer the old desperation. But she persuaded herself that she will “cheat” her husband and children less by finding work she can do at home.
The picture of the happy housewife doing creative work at home—painting, sculpting, writing—is one of the semi-delusions of the feminine mystique. There are men and women who can do it; but when a man works