Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique is a landmark text for which movement?

• A. First Wave Feminism
• B. Civil Rights Movement
• C. Black Power Movement
• D. Second Wave Feminism

Answer: (D)

The main idea this question tests is the shift in feminist activism in the United States after suffrage, sparked by a work that challenged women's limited roles in postwar society. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, argued that many women felt unfulfilled by the traditional expectation of domesticity and motherhood, describing “the problem that has no name.” By naming this dissatisfaction and linking it to broader social and economic structures, the book helped galvanize a movement focused on achieving greater equality in education, work, and public life. It energized organized feminism—leading to the formation of groups like the National Organization for Women and pushing the push for legal and cultural changes beyond voting rights. Because its critique targeted the broad, systemic constraints on women’s lives and called for a new phase of feminist activism, it is associated with Second Wave Feminism. The other movements primarily addressed different issues—First Wave focusing on suffrage, while Civil Rights and Black Power center on racial equality—so this book is best understood as a landmark text of the second wave.