TreVontaye Toby’s Reviews > The Feminine Mystique > Status Update

Friedan’s critique of domestic confinement reflects a specific white, middle-class frustration: the reduction of women’s personhood to homemaking. Yet for many Black women, the historical struggle was not escape from domestic identity but recognition of womanhood itself within a system that denied its protections. Where white suburban feminism asked whether womanhood was enough, Black feminist thought often asked whether Black women were even permitted to be recognized as women. Consequently, Black feminism frequently emphasized dignity within family, community preservation, and the integration of equality with femininity, rather than the abandonment of relational roles. The divergence reveals not opposing values, but differing starting points shaped by race, labor, and historical exclusion.

Both movements emerged within historically specific constraints that required them to negotiate the meaning of womanhood. Yet the deeper philosophical question of full human actualization — beyond gendered valuation — remains an ongoing project rather than a completed one.