True, her focus on the individual`s capacity to change her situation rather than on the need to change the surrounding political and social structures, her neglect of working-class and black women and her traditional attitudes to sexuality, means that her influence on the later development of American feminism was patchy; radical thinkers and activists were not sympathetic to a liberalism that failed to refer to women beyond a very narrow social and racial range. However, even if ideas and strategies have moved on from 1963 - something Friedan herself acknowledged in her later writing as necessary and valuable -The Feminine Mystique has continued to remain a landmark text until today. Whatever their politics, few feminists, of whatever persuasion, would want deny the book`s power, by virtue of its combination of incisive analysis and passionate argument, to break through conventional assumptions and opinions and stimulate new ways of thinking and feeling.
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