The Cold War and the "Feminine Mystique"

The Cold War and the "Feminine Mystique" 

Following World War II, the early Cold War era was marked by a polarizing gender ideology. Women who had entered the manufacturing industry at unprecedented numbers during the war effort, left or were pushed out of higher education and the workforce.
During this time, an idea was arises and was called the Feminine Mystique. The feminine mystique was the false notion that a woman’s “role” in society is to be a wife, mother and housewife nothing else. The mystique is an artificial idea of femininity that says having a career can somehow go against women's role. The mystique was the constant bombardment of housewife and nurturing mother images that esteem the virtue of keeping house and raising children as what woman are supposed too, while criticizing the “masculinity” of women who want to do other things. 
However, the "Feminine Mystique" was not an idea, rather it was a book. Even people who have not read the "Feminine Mystique" can often identify it as a book that drew attention to the massive unhappiness of women trying to fit a media-idealized “happy suburban housewife” image. The book examined the role of women’s magazines, Freudian psychology and educational institutions in limiting women’s life options. Betty Friedan drew back the curtain on society’s pursuit of the pervasive mystique.
During this time period, events were being created which was starting to lead to unsettling feel in women. In the Sara Evans text Born for Liberty mentions " Domestic ideology redefined a new reality- female labor force participation to remove the potential threat of female power and autonomy by making women's work legitimate only as a n extensions of traditional family responsibility."  (pg 262) This quote shows that women during this era started going backward instead of gaining more power. Cold war gave the men the power of control back, putting the women back to their house duty cage again.