etty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963
Lessing publication dates 1950 to 1963 publication of seminal The Golden Notebook.
And more.
The communist French left bank had influence on postwar women especially college educated ones. Grenwich village and the modern art world were expressions of this influence. Women’s consciousness raising sessions were held in my affluent educated childhood suburb in mid 60s. Universities were biificated. Husband hunting grounds and career women power bases.
Look at the difference between the lives of Caroline Graglia and Ruth Ginsberg. Both same class at Harvard Law.
But the average American woman in the 1950s was not living in Greenwich Village or in museums of modern art. The average American women knew Betty Crocker and Marilyn Monroe, and was singing, "To Know Him is to Love Him along with the Teddy Bears. So what was the average American woman doing in the 1950s to make men not want to marry them anymore?