Tonight, in an event hosted by the BU Alumni Association and the College of Arts and Sciences, a panel of faculty and alumni scholars led by Virginia Sapiro, dean of Arts & Sciences, will consider the book’s enduring legacy. “If you want to understand what has happened to American women over the last half-century,” writes Collins, “you have to start with this book.” That, writes New York Times columnist Gail Collins in her introduction to the new anniversary edition, is testimony to “the wallop it packed.” The book, which sold 1.4 million copies in its first paperback printing, marked the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States, and its impact, said Future Shock author Alvin Toffler, “pulled the trigger on history.” Friedan’s observations sparked a passionate discussion that continues today about the role of women both at home and in the workplace.įriedan, who died in 2006 at 85, addressed frankly “the problem with no name”: the fact that educated post–World War II homemakers-back then called housewives-were unhappy, undervalued, and unfulfilled. Now 50 years old, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was named by the conservative magazine Human Events in 2005 as one of the “most harmful” books of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Twitter Facebook The BU Alumni Association and the College of Arts and Sciences is hosting a panel discussion tonight, February 7, celebrating and discussing the 50th anniversary of The Feminine Mystique by groundbreaking second-wave feminist Betty Friedan.

The feminine mystique original cover