Feminist Thinkers: Mary Wollstonecraft and Betty Friedan
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and Betty Friedan (1921-2006) are the two thinkers most associated with liberal feminism, which holds that women's disadvantage stems from denied rights and opportunities, and that reform within existing institutions can fix it.
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Method
- Attribute claims precisely: Wollstonecraft wrote about education and reason in the 1790s; Friedan wrote about the postwar suburban housewife role in the 1960s. Do not merge their arguments into one generic 'liberal feminism says'.
- For Wollstonecraft, centre the answer on education: she argued women's apparent weakness of mind was the result of a deficient education that trained them only in charm and obedience, not evidence of natural inferiority, and that reason and virtue are the same in men and women.
- For Friedan, centre the answer on 'the problem that has no name': she argued that the postwar ideal of the fulfilled housewife (the 'feminine mystique') concealed widespread dissatisfaction among educated women denied a role beyond the home, and used this to argue for equal access to paid work and public life.
- Note what links them despite the 170-year gap: both see education and paid work, not the abolition of the family or a revolution in personal relationships, as the route to women's equality, which is why both are classified as liberal rather than radical feminists.
- Know the concrete institutional link: Friedan's activism fed directly into the founding of NOW in 1966, a campaigning organisation that pursued liberal feminist goals (equal pay, legal equality, reproductive rights) through lobbying and litigation, illustrating liberal feminism's characteristic reform-through-institutions strategy.
- For an evaluate question on either thinker, weigh their historical significance (what they achieved or changed) against a radical feminist critique that their focus on legal and economic rights left patriarchy in the private sphere largely unexamined.
Worked example
Plan an answer to: 'Assess the extent to which Wollstonecraft's and Friedan's arguments remain distinctively liberal feminist.' Focus on their shared belief in reform through education and work.
- State the shared liberal feminist premise: both locate the cause of women's disadvantage in denied opportunity (education for Wollstonecraft, paid work and public life for Friedan) rather than in a system of male power over the private sphere.
- Give Wollstonecraft's specific claim: equal, rational education would let women develop the same virtue and reason as men, closing the apparent gap between the sexes.
- Give Friedan's specific claim: the 'feminine mystique', the postwar idea that women found total fulfilment as wives and mothers, was a myth that trapped educated women in unsatisfying domestic roles, so access to meaningful paid work was the remedy.
- Identify what makes both liberal rather than radical: neither calls for the family or marriage itself to be abolished or fundamentally restructured; both work through existing institutions, education systems and workplaces that already exist within a liberal state.
- Conclude with a judgement: despite writing in very different periods, both remain distinctively liberal feminist because both treat expanded rights and opportunity within the existing system, not a transformation of the private sphere, as the solution.
Practice questions
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Q1In what year did Wollstonecraft publish A Vindication of the Rights of Woman?Show answer
Answer: 1792.
Q2What did Wollstonecraft argue was the real cause of women appearing less rational than men?Show answer
Answer: A deficient education that trained women in charm and obedience rather than reason, not any natural inferiority.
Q3What phrase did Friedan use to describe the unnamed dissatisfaction of 1950s and 1960s American housewives?Show answer
Answer: 'The problem that has no name.'
Q4What organisation did Friedan help found in 1966?Show answer
Answer: The National Organization for Women (NOW).
Q5In what book did Friedan set out her critique of the suburban housewife role?Show answer
Answer: The Feminine Mystique (1963).
Q6Give one reason both Wollstonecraft and Friedan are classified as liberal, rather than radical, feminists.Show answer
Answer: Both locate the cause of women's disadvantage in denied education or opportunity and look to reform within existing institutions, rather than arguing that the family or private sphere itself must be transformed.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a A Level Politics exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Explain and analyse two similarities between the arguments of Wollstonecraft and Friedan.
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'Friedan's arguments simply update Wollstonecraft's for the twentieth century.' Analyse and evaluate this statement.
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