In 1963, the same year American businesswoman Mary Kay Ash started her cosmetics company, publisher W.W. Norton released 'The Feminine Mystique ' the book that has since been widely credited with launching the contemporary women's liberation movement. Ash loathed the term "feminist' and disliked the movement. In a 1983 Dallas Morning News interview, she dismissed 'that foolishness feminists started in the '60s' of 'trying to act just like a man' by cutting their hair short or lowering their voices. Yet Ash, who died in 2001, successfully defied her era's female gender norms. She turned a few thousand dollars into a multibillion-dollar cosmetics empire and led it for decades. Her sales force grew from fewer than 10 women to tens of thousands. While researching a book on Ash's life and work, I've learned that many of the Mary Kay saleswomen were comfortable with their era's vision of femininity and motherhood. Ash's company motto of 'God First, Family Second, Career Third' put them at...
learn more
