<P> The Feminine Mystique is a book written by Betty Friedan which is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second - wave feminism in the United States . It was published on February 19, 1963 by W.W. Norton . </P> <P> In 1957, Friedan was asked to conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion; the results, in which she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, prompted her to begin research for The Feminine Mystique, conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising . She originally intended to publish an article on the topic, not a book, but no magazine would publish her article . </P> <P> During the year of 1964, The Feminine Mystique became the bestselling nonfiction book with over one million copies sold . In this book, Friedan challenged the widely shared belief in 1950s that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949--the housewife - mother ." </P> <P> The Feminine Mystique begins with an introduction describing what Friedan called "the problem that has no name"--the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and early 1960s . It discusses the lives of several housewives from around the United States who were unhappy despite living in material comfort and being married with children . Furthermore, Friedan questioned the women's magazine, women's education system and advertisers for creating this widespread image of women . The detrimental effects induced by this image was that it narrowed women into the domestic sphere and led many women to lose their own identities . </P>

Who described the problem that had no name in her 1963 book the feminine mystique