Abstract
This chapter explicates Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in order to highlight problems that were brought to the forefront 50 years ago and to summarize how this key text has influenced conversations about women in the workplace. Mayock here examines expectations that individuals hold for the workplace and compares them to the realities individuals confront in the workplace. She adapts Friedan’s “feminine mystique” to a concept of “professional mystique.”
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- 1.
See Christie Aschwanden’s “Harassment in Science, Replicated” (The New York Times, 11-11-2014) for statistics on sexual harassment and sexual assault of women at field sites and for a call-to-arms to eliminate these illegal behaviors.
- 2.
Suzanne Romaine cogently treats how women often become different because of the ways in which they have to navigate cultural and workplace inequities: “Feminist theorist Catherine MacKinnon has cautioned against regarding gender differences as an explanatory ‘bottom line.’ Instead, she advocates looking at the difference gender makes. It is no accident that the stereotypical female style of behavior shows the traits it does when the burden of caring for others has disproportionately fallen on women. Greater social sensitivity and politeness are the burden of subordinates in a climate when one has to pay attention to the nuances of the struggle for equality (see Chapter 6 on the linguistic hallmarks of politeness). Deborah Cameron (1992a) feels we should not unequivocally celebrate differences that have evolved and been sustained through limiting women’s freedom of choice, and through keeping women in a subordinate and economically dependent condition. This does not mean, however, that we need to see women’s behavior as being uniformly determined by and indicative of their subordination and powerlessness. Another implication of continuing to believe that men and women are opposites with different traits is that it absolves men from the responsibility of being caring, nurturing, and so on” (60).
- 3.
See Chapter 5 of Maher and Thompson Tetreault’s Privilege and Diversity in the Academy for a detailed examination of the power of traditional academic departments.
- 4.
Elizabeth M. Chamberlain describes thoroughly the types of images that surround us in a daily barrage of media messages: “Middle level students and their teachers and parents are immersed in a larger culture in which sexual innuendo and sexualized comments are embedded in nearly all forms of media. Advertisements, televisions programs, music, video games, and even T-shirts present sexual images and messages in direct opposition to mutual regard and respect between genders. […] Images of sexuality in music, films, video games, and even cartoons are often nothing short of pornographic. Women are depicted as willing partners in their own mutilation and sexual invasion. […]. Women’s ‘no’ means ‘try again,’ and their protests of displeasure are interpreted as feminine wiles designed to encourage males to display more aggressive behavior” (9). In her article, Chamberlain provides this lengthy description in order to highlight the disjuncture between the official language of policy and actual cultural beliefs and practices.
- 5.
See also Joan Williams’ Unbending Gender (2000), Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Gregg Lee Carter’s Working Women in America: Split Dreams (2005), Gornick and Meyers’ Families that Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment (2003), Mason, Wolfinger, and Goulden’s Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower (2013), Hochschild and Machung’s The Second Shift. Working Families and the Revolution at Home (2012 edition) and, Hochschild’s The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (2001) for examinations of perceptions of and realities for women and mothers in the workforce.
- 6.
See Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary “Miss Representation” (2011) for an extremely elucidating, current view of the bombardment of damaging images of women in media.
References
Aschwanden, Christie. 2014. Harassment in science, replicated. The New York Times, 11 Nov 2014. Accessed 14 Aug 2014. Web.
Boraas, Stephanie, and William M. Rodgers III. 2003. How does gender play a role in the earnings gap? An update. Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review Online 126(3): 9–15. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2003/03/art2abs.htm. Accessed 26 Sept 2011. Web.
Coontz, Stephanie. 2011. A strange stirring. The feminine mystique and American women at the dawn of the 1960s. New York: Basic. Print.
Friedan, Betty. 1983. The feminine mystique. New York: Dell/Laurel. Print.
Gornick, Janet C., and Marcia K. Meyers. 2003. Families that work: Policies for reconciling parenthood and employment. New York: Russell Sage. Print.
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy, and Gregg Lee Carter. 2005. Working women in America: Split dreams. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print.
Hirshman, Linda R. 2006. Get to work. A manifesto for women of the world. New York: Penguin/Viking. Print.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell, and Anne Machung. 2012. The second shift. Working families and the revolution at home. New York: Penguin. Print.
Mason, Mary Ann, Nicholas H. Wolfinger, and Marc Goulden. 2013. Do babies matter? Gender and family in the ivory tower. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Print.
Siebel Newsom, Jennifer. 2011. Miss representation. Roco Films, DVD.
Williams, Joan C. 2000. Unbending gender. Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print.
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Mayock, E. (2016). The Enduring Feminine Mystique . In: Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_4
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