Influences

• 1n 1960 the birth control pill arrived and sexual freedom was born.
• Women were greatly influenced by books and articles by feminists such as Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem and Shulamith Firestone, and by publications such as Women Unite: An Anthology of the Women's Movement (1972) and Margaret Anderson's Mother Was Not a Person (1973). These writers held that society's major power relationship was one of domination and oppression of women by men. The existing body of social relationships, along with the very functioning of society, was analysed and criticized.
• In 1963 The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, was published and became a best seller. This book spoke to many women’s dissatisfactions with the role that society expected of them. The book encouraged women to work for change. Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s would later say The Feminine Mystique was the book that “started it all.” The book explores the unhappiness of mid-20^th century women. She describes women’s unhappiness as “the problem that has no name.” Women felt this sense of depression because they were forced to be subservient to men financially, mentally, physically, and intellectually.
• Women were greatly influenced by books and articles by feminists such as Kate Millett, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem and Shulamith Firestone, and by publications such as Women Unite: An Anthology of the Women's Movement (1972) and Margaret Anderson's Mother Was Not a Person (1973).