Post-WWII culture followed a resurgence of domesticity similar to that of pre-suffrage America. Cold War politics forced women into a life of triviality lacking in counterculture movements due to the increased pressure to remain anti-radical in the face of the Second Red Scare. Daniel Horowitz exemplifies this problem within his analysis of Betty Friedan’s shift from her time at UE News, to her less radical writings for mass circulation magazines in 1955. At UE News, Friedan discussed corporations’ systematic discrimination against women, cultural and economic sources of women’s oppression, the special difficulties of double discrimination faced by racialized people, and even discrimination of women in institutions such as the home. For instance, Friedan’s 1952 pamphlet UE Fights for Women Workers suggested that, “industry glorifies the…show more content… Anti-communist ideals forced the issues of women’s political activism and radicalized working class reform into the shadows as anti-communist McCarthyite attacks became more prevalent. Friedan found herself censored and thus forced into writing better selling articles for the white middle-class. Despite identifying oppression at the domestic level, such articles did not seem to hold as much impact as those written for UE News. Having been integrated into suburban culture herself, Friedman began to speak of the disillusionment and sense of false complacency that came with domesticity. She adapted her argument about the oppression of women to speak of a “problem that had no name,” within her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique. Friedan knew the approach to this problem needed to be different than that of those feminists in the early twentieth century; rather the solution relied upon adult education and self-realization to change a culture that favored a less ambitious woman. A new working definition of femininity was necessary to inspire women to want careers, higher education, political rights, and most importantly
