Joanna Eberhart has just moved from New York City to the suburban town of Stepford with her husband, Walter, and their two kids. The houses here are beautiful, but the women who live here are all old-fashioned and emotionally distant, and they only seem to care housework and pleasing their husbands. Joanna is a member of the National Organization for Women, and she’s used to spending time with likeminded feminists. Walter is also quite involved in the feminist movement. Joanna is surprised, then, when Walter announces that he’ll be joining the local Men’s Association. Joanna thought he agreed that all-male clubs are outdated and sexist, but he promises to change the organization from the inside.
After trying and failing to connect with the women in Stepford, Joanna meets Bobbie, who—like her—is perplexed by how cold and strange their neighbors are. Bobbie and her husband, Dave, are also new to Stepford. Though Dave has also joined the Men’s Association, Bobbie suggests that he also thinks Stepford is behind the times when it comes to gender equality. Bobbie and Joanna decide to go around the neighborhood asking if the local women want to start a female equivalent of the Men’s Association, but they all say they’re either too busy with housework or they simply aren’t interested. Only one woman, Charmaine, who is open to the idea. She moved to Stepford a month before Bobbie and is excited when Joanna agrees to play tennis with her weekly at her home tennis court.
While going through some old things her house’s previous owners left behind, Joanna finds a scrap of newspaper. The scrap contains part of an article about a Women’s Club in Stepford. Joanna is shocked, since such an organization clearly doesn’t exist anymore. Even stranger, though, is that Kit Sundersen, one of the women Joanna spoke to about forming a new club, is listed in the article as the president of the Women’s Club. When Joanna spoke to her, Kit didn’t mention this.
One night, Walter brings home members of the Men’s Association. He tells Joanna that she should sit with them in the living room—it might be good for the men to see she can bring good ideas to the table. She agrees. Everything goes well, as all of the men seem to appreciate her input—except for Dale Coba, the president of the Association. Dale seems condescending and doesn’t even look at Joanna when she speaks. At one point, Joanna she realizes that Ike Mazzard, a famous magazine illustrator, is sketching her. She asks him to stop, but he doesn’t. When Ike finishes his drawing, Joanna’s feelings change: she’s flattered by the portrait and is delighted when he signs it and gives it to her.
One day, Charmaine calls to reschedule her and Joanna’s weekly tennis game. She explains that her husband has gotten it into his head that they need a weekend alone—something she’s not terribly thrilled about. They make plans to play tennis a few days later, but when Joanna shows up at Charmaine’s house, Charmaine has forgotten their plans and claims she doesn’t have time for tennis, since she needs to clean the house. Joanna is confused—Charmaine usually has her housekeeper do the cleaning. But Charmaine explains that she let the housekeeper go, saying she was too sloppy. She also says she has lost interest in tennis, and when Joanna says she doesn’t believe this, Charmaine takes her to the back window. Joanna sees that men are ripping up the tennis court, and Charmaine explains that they’re installing a putting green, since her husband likes golf more than tennis. She then goes on about how great her husband is and how devoting herself to doing housework is the least she can do.
Unsettled by Charmaine’s transformation, Joanna leaves and tells Bobbie about this change in their friend. Bobbie visits Charmaine and confirms that something strange has happened. She forms a theory that there’s something in Stepford that makes women become subservient and domestic. She cites a recent news story about a town in Texas where chemicals made residents easygoing and subdued. There might be something similar in the water in Stepford, she guesses, so she starts drinking bottled water. She also says that she’s going to talk to Dave about moving to a neighboring town, where things are a bit more modern and relaxed. She urges Joanna to do the same.
That night, Joanna, and she tells Walter about what Bobbie said. He thinks it sounds far-fetched, but he also wants to make sure Joanna is happy. For this reason, he says he would be open to moving at the end of the school year if Joanna were to decide that’s what she wants. She’s relieved, and though she starts accompanying Bobbie on house-hunting tours, she doubts she’ll actually end up wanting to move herself.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Joanna watches one of Bobbie’s children for the weekend—she and Dave have decided they need a weekend alone. At the end of the weekend, she’s glad to see how refreshed Bobbie looks. As she, Bobbie, Dave, and Walter stand by the front door and talk, Joanna is impressed by Bobbie’s radiance, though she’s also surprised that Bobbie doesn’t offer any funny comments like she normally would. When they say goodbye, Walter hesitates for a moment before kissing Bobbie on the cheek. Later, Joanna and Walter make plans to have a weekend of their own after Christmas.
In the coming days, Joanna doesn’t hear from Bobbie. Usually, Bobbie calls every day, but this time Joanna is the one to reach out. On the phone, Bobbie seems preoccupied. She has been busy grocery shopping and cleaning, she says. When Joanna visits her the next day, she’s horrified to see that her friend has undergone the same transformation as Charmaine: she says she doesn’t have time to do anything except clean, and she goes on at length about how great Dave is. She has been lazy and neglectful, she says, and now she wants to honor her husband by devoting herself to being a better wife.
Terrified, Joanna rushes home and calls Walter at the office. She tells him that she can’t stay in Stepford. She wants to sell the house as soon as possible, but he tells her to calm down and that she shouldn’t do anything drastic until he gets home. When they hang up, though, Joanna calls Bobbie’s real estate agent and says she’s interested in making a fast purchase of a house they recently toured. She also calls her own broker and prepares to list her house. But then Walter gets home and accuses her of being “hysterical.” He claims that Bobbie must have simply decided to start putting some effort into her life and appearance—something he thinks Joanna could do, too. He tells her he will go along with her idea to move if she goes to see a therapist to make sure she’s not having a breakdown. She books an appointment with a female therapist who practices out of town.
At her appointment, Joanna explains her concerns to Dr. Margaret Fancher, who listens kindly and doesn’t make her feel crazy. She thinks it’s normal for Joanna to feel stifled by her domestic lifestyle in Stepford, but she doesn’t think Joanna’s theories are realistic. She prescribes her medication and encourages her to come back for another session. Before going home, though, Joanna goes to the library and goes through archives of the local paper. She learns that the Women’s Club was extraordinarily active but then suddenly disbanded around the same time that Dale Coba founded the Men’s Association. She also learns that Dale Coba used to work at Disneyland as one of the people who designed the lifelike robots made to look and act like American presidents. Suddenly, she realizes what has been happening: the women in Stepford are all robots. It takes four months for the Men’s Association to get ready to turn the women into robots, which is why Charmaine changed a month before Bobbie. And Bobbie moved to Stepford a month before Joanna, which means Joanna has a little less than a month before her own transformation.
Joanna speeds home and insists that she’s leaving with the children, but Walter reveals that he sent them elsewhere. He won’t let her leave, insisting that her theory about robots is crazy. She pretends to rest in their bedroom, and then she then tries to slip out the window, but she’s unable. As she tries, she hears Walter making a phone call and realizes he’s calling the other men. While he’s on the phone, she creeps downstairs and out into the wintry cold. She tries to make her way through the neighborhood undetected, but a group of men eventually corners her. She fends them off with a broken branch, but they soon make her feel foolish, claiming they don’t have the intelligence to turn humans into robots. One of them suggests that maybe she would believe them if she saw a Stepford woman prick her finger—if she bled, then Joanna would know she’s not a robot. Joanna agrees to go with them to Bobbie’s house, already feeling absurd.
Once they reach Bobbie’s house, the men wait on the doorstep while Joanna goes into the kitchen with her friend. She tells Bobbie that she doesn’t really have to make herself bleed, but Bobbie doesn’t mind. She stands over the sink and pulls out a knife, which is unnecessarily large. She coaxes Joanna forward, saying, “The men are waiting.”
The narrative cuts to the supermarket. Ruthanne Henry—a new Stepford resident—encounters Joanna in one of the aisles. The two women became friends several weeks ago, but now Ruthanne is astonished to see that Joanna is completely different. She looks extremely good, but her personality is different, and she seems to only care about housework. Unsettled, Ruthanne goes home and tries to get some work done on the book she’s writing, hoping to finish before the weekend, which she and her husband have planned to spend together in privacy.
