The Feminine Mystique was also addressing an audience receptive to new ideas and new forms of behaviour because of changes in the political climate. There were signs that government policy regarding women`s issues was beginning to shift; President Eisenhower had sought to persuade Congress to legislate for equal pay between the sexes in 1956; in 1961, President Kennedy had created the President`s Commission on the Status of Women; and in 1962 a campaign had begun to establish state commissions across the country. If politicians, keen to recruit female electoral support, were beginning to take notice of feminist arguments, then there is little doubt that opinion in the country was also moving in the same direction.
Economically and socially as well, change was happening. Female employment , which had declined following the end of the War, had began to grow and was increasingly viewed as an acceptable option - providing, of course, that it didn`t pose any threat to the traditional jobs of men; a secretary was OK but not an architect or doctor. And, a college-education was also more and more regarded as an asset - even though it meant different things for men and women - a career for the former and the role of a well-educated wife for the latter. Related to these developments was a loosening of traditional sexual morality; the permissive society hadn`t quite arrived by 1963 but Helen Gurley Brown`s Sex and the Single Girl (1962) suggested it was fast approaching.
Furthermore, The Feminine Mystique can be viewed as an example and product of the early Sixties` developing culture of questioning and dissent. Black people and students were starting to push against the status quo, demanding racial equality, an end to nuclear escalation and the dominance of the military-industrial complex, greater social equality and a more `participatory` democracy. The new Left may not have been campaigning for female liberation and at least some of its members may have shared the sexism of the surrounding society but this new and loosely connected movement did help create a social context in which talk of individual freedom and equality was increasingly prominent.
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