Woman of the Month
Betty Friedan
By: Mary Elise Chavez
Posted January 2007
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American feminist, activist, and writer. Philosopher of modern-day feminism.
Her work, The Feminine Mystique, is regarded as one of the most meaningful and substantial works of our contemporary society. Those that knew her often referred to her as an extremely abrasive, intense, overpowering personality. Which is quite possibly what it took to do what she did. An extreme, male-inspired, dominant personality was needed for a woman to have the whirlwind impact on women's rights and liberties, as Betty Friedan did.
Perhaps her inspiration for The Feminine Mystique, which focused on the idea of the burdened housewife, came from her mother, who quit her job as a women's page editor for a newspaper when she became pregnant with Betty. She saw her mother become frustrated with the transition and isolation of the housewife role, and when her mother took over the family shop, she seemed much more gratified from her new life outside of the home.
When Betty was a young woman, she was very active in Marxist and Jewish radical circles. In 1947, she was married to Carl Friedman, and she continued to work after they got married, which was rare at the time (they later divorced in 1969). When she became pregnant with her second child, she was fired from the union newspaper UE News in 1952.
In 1963, The Feminine Mystique was published, which was a reworked and expanded article which Betty turned into a book. Possibly her most well-known and quoted work throughout her lifetime, it focused on the roles of women in industrial societies, predominantly the housewife role which Betty saw as extremely problematic.
- The problem that has no name — which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities — is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
- - Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
- - The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question: Is this all?
- -Betty Friedan
-
Betty had experienced the uncomfortable transition into the life of housewife herself, and realized that her former college classmates were dissatisfied with their lives as well. She believed that women were victims of a pervasive system of delusions and false values that urged them to find their fulfillment and identity vicariously, through their husbands and children. She did several studies and research with her former college classmates, which resulted in the compilation of The Feminine Mystique. This book spawned the second wave of feminism and gave significant power to the women's movement. Friedan's book was a new voice to women during a time when they were expected to be silent.
In 1966 Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), which was dedicated to achieving equality of opportunity for women. A founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus (1971), she was a leader of the campaign for gratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Surely, she has been central to the reshaping of American attitudes toward women's lives and rights. Through decades of social activism, strategic thinking and powerful writing, Friedan is one of contemporary society's most effective leaders.
- Betty Friedan: 1921-2006. She died on her 85th birthday.
Noted Works by Friedan:
The Feminine Mystique / 1963
The Second State / 1981
The Fountain of Age / 1993
Life So Far (Autobiography) / 2000 - Information gathered from:
National Women's Hall of Fame
Americanwriters.org
Thenation.com
Now.org
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