Katha Pollitt: Still the Second Sex

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan argued that American women suffered from a malaise she called "the problem that had no name." Her critique of domestic ennui helped launch the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s, leading to many of the advances women now take for granted. But not everything has changed. So we asked women to answer this question: If you had to pinpoint today's problem that had no name, what would it be? Read the other responses here. [2]

A lot has changed since 1963. But one thing that hasn't is that middle-class women are still constantly told they have everything they need to be happy. If a woman is dissatisfied, it's her own personal problem. She's too ambitious, expects too much of men, is holding out for true love instead of settling for someone who'll take out the garbage. Often feminism gets the blame—women have too much freedom, and men have even more. I wish I had a dollar for every woman who has explained to me that feminism is to blame for the fact that she has to work when she wants to stay home with her kids, or doesn't have kids, or isn't married, or got divorced, or is ignored at a party in favor of some other, more interesting but less worthy woman.

Feminism has made an enormous, positive difference in the lives of millions of women, including working-class women. It's been good for men, too—it has improved sex, made fatherhood more intimate, and made marriage more of a partnership. It's one of the reasons we're a less conformist, frightened, bland, and hierarchical society than the one Friedan wrote about.

And yet, women are still the second sex, pushed and pulled in dozens of ways into leading the lesser life and left to wonder how that happened. The media has lots of time to make feminists look ridiculous—because of course the most important quality in a social-justice movement is whether its members have a sense of humor and a closetful of great outfits!

But it has much less time to analyze the social structures that keep women in their place, whether it's the glass ceiling, the tolerance of rape and domestic violence, the quest for the perfect ultra-thin, large-breasted body that almost nobody actually possesses, or the many holes in our web of laws and regulations that leave women mostly unprotected against exploitation and discrimination in the workplace. Not to mention the subtler ways that women are marginalized at work and nudged into doing the lioness' share at home. Somehow, everything we know about sociology goes out the window when we talk about women and men: Instead, we act as if people just mysteriously make "choices." All of which are good!

To a certain extent, feminists and feminist-leaning women have bought this extreme individualizing of social problems. It's as if every woman has to figure out for herself how to square the circle: Find the childcare and the healthcare, work out a maternity arrangement with her boss, get her husband to remember to buy milk, keep her daughter from getting an eating disorder and her son from getting his girlfriend pregnant. Oh, and do all this while enduring a constant barrage of open misogyny from popular culture and amused belittlement from upscale culture, until you reach true invisibility at the ripe old age of 40.

In countries that provide more help to people and to families, women are still unequal, but there's a lot less stress. It's a scandal that the U.S. has no national health care, public daycare system, paid maternity leave, or paid sick leave. It's a scandal that so many women are poor and socially isolated, that sex ed is hostage to religious nuts, and that access to consistent and respectful reproductive care is so spotty that more than half of pregnancies are unintended. All these benefits would help women, and men too, combine work and raising families more easily. The trouble is that, although there are lots of feminists, there is not a big enough activist feminist movement to make much headway on these issues. So people grumble, adjust, make the best deal they can, and get on with their lives.

Will the election of Barack Obama help move the feminist ball forward? Feminism flourishes when other social-justice movements are vigorous, so to the extent that Obama's victory signals a reenergized left/liberal/progressive coalition, there's hope. The recession may break down some conventional gender arrangements, too: It's hard to be a stay-home mom when your husband's out of work, and there are signs that, among younger couples, newly unemployed men are doing more at home than in previous downturns. That would be nice.

Ultimately, though, it is we women ourselves who will have to deconstruct the modern-day version of the mystique. We need to revisit issues like domestic violence, rape, legal bias, sexism in romance and marriage, and the sexual double standard. Unlike in Betty Friedan's day, we know how to name our problems. What is harder is to see that naming them doesn't make them go away.