terms. But now those roles which have historically belonged to women are stretched to include political responsibility for nuclear disarmament—“to cherish not just their own but the children of the enemy Since, beginning with the same premise and examining the same body of anthropological evidence, she now arrives at a slightly different
sexual role for women, one might seriously question the basis upon which she decides the roles a woman should play—and finds it so easy to change the rules of the game from one decade to the next.
Other social scientists have arrived at the astonishing conclusion that being a woman was no more and no less than being human.”
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But a cultural lag is built into the feminine mystique. By the time a few social scientists were discovering the flaws in “woman’s role,”
American educators had seized upon it as a magic sesame. Instead of educating women for the greater maturity required to participate in modern society—with all the problems, conflicts,
and hard work involved, for educators as well as women—they began educating them to play the role of woman.”