Although she resists attempts to fit her into a narrow definition of the term, Atwood is known as a feminist writer. Her formative years in Toronto in the late 1950s and 1960s coincided with the emergence of what is often referred to as the "second wave" of modern feminism. This was marked, among other things, by the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963, a book that Atwood acknowledges had a large influence on her own thinking. During the 1960s, women in North America began to challenge stereotypical definitions of how women should behave, and to question the traditional roles assigned to them. A political movement emerged, spearheaded in the United States by the National Organization of Women (NOW), demanding equal employment opportunities and equal pay for women, as well as an.....
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