[gcruse]

I think there is a lot of truth in what you are saying.  I would
propose that you could back this up from the 1950s, to the
1940s.  WWII ushered in Rosie the Riveter, and an explosion
of women into the workplace out of necessity.  When the
war was over, soldiers returned and married the women, many
of whom stopped working.

But the elixir of female self-sufficiency had been tasted.  A
woman's place wasn't necessarily in the home.  Feminism
may have been a reaction to the Playboy forum.  Based on
their wartime experience, American women already knew
that they needed men like fish needed bicycles.  The journey
back into the workplace followed a new path.  Rather than
necessity, the human need for self-actualization, along with
the time-saving household appliances you mentioned,
propelled bored housewives into careers, and feminism
became their justification.

[Scenic Sounds]

Yes, I agree. The reality is that we got where we are now because of a zillion little choices that have been freely made by hundreds of millions of American men and women in the last 50 or 60 years. And the vast majority of those choices were probably made by people who had never read any of the "feminist" books that were written.

If all of these folks were such big fans of Betty Friedan, how come it's never been terribly fashionable to look like her?

People are not made of clay. Only the utopians think that a society can be sculpted with books.