Friedan, Betty

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[[Image:Betty Friedan 1960.jpg|thumb|left|Betty Friedan, 1960]]
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'''Betty Friedan''' (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an [[United States|American]] [[feminism|feminist]], [[activism|activist]] and [[writer]]. Her book, ''The Feminine Mystique'' written in 1963, is considered by many to have given important impetus to the [[women's rights movement]]. It was a bestseller in 1964, the year of the passage of the [[Civil Rights Act]] and sold over three million copies its first year. Her book, geared to the suburban housewife of post-World War II America, and based on a survey she took of her Smith colleauges, told of their disaffection with societal roles prescribed for them. In an era when a woman could choose to stay at home or have a career, two paths that were mutually exclusive, Betty's book opened the way for women to re-think their places in their family, community and the world-at large.
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[[Image:Betty Friedan 1960.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Betty Friedan, 1960]]
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'''Betty Friedan''' (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an [[United States|American]] [[feminism|feminist]], [[activism|activist]], and [[writer]]. Her 1963 book, ''The Feminine Mystique,'' is considered by many to have given important impetus to the [[women's rights movement]]. It was a bestseller in 1964, the year of the passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|Civil Rights Act]], when it sold over three million copies. Her book, geared to the suburban housewife of post–[[World War II]] America, and based on a survey she took of her [[Smith College]] colleagues, told of women's disaffection with societal roles prescribed for them. In an era when a woman could choose to stay at home or have a career—two paths that were normally deemed mutually exclusive—Friedan's book opened the way for women to rethink their places in the [[family]], the [[community]], and the world at large.
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==Early life and Education==
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Friedan was born '''Bettye Naomi Goldstein''' on February 4, 1921, in Peoria, [[Illinois]].
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Her father, Harry Goldstein, owned a jewelry shop and her mother, Miriam Horowitz Goldstein, quit her job as a women's page editor for a [[newspaper]] when she became pregnant with Betty. When Betty's mother took over running the shop after her husband fell ill, Betty noted that she seemed happier and more gratified than when she was an at-home mother. Although the family was well-off, her mother's frustration and unhappiness at being a housewife, coupled with the fact that the family was [[Judaism|Jewish]] and did not fit into the [[culture|cultural]] milieu of Peoria, led to Betty's feelings of isolation and anger as a teenager.  
  
==Early life and Education==
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Betty channeled her dissatisfaction with the [[status quo]] into seeking social change. She became active in [[Marxism|Marxist]] and Jewish radical circles. Eventually, she became disillusioned with ideologies, like [[communism]], that did not fit her experience. “But in the America where I lived, abstractions of that world revolution of the masses didn't seem all that real, didn't really work, didn't actually change real life...,” she said in her autobiography. “But later this struggle to make sense of it all made me wary of any tinge of authoritarianism in the women's movement and the danger of perversion of feminism by its own extremists.”<ref>Betty Friedan, ''Life So Far'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000 ISBN 0684807890), 57.</ref>
Friedan was born '''Bettye Naomi Goldstein''' on February 4, 1921 in [[Peoria, Illinois]].
 
Her father  owned a jewelry shop and her mother quit a job as a women's page editor for a newspaper when she became pregnant with Betty in order to become a housewife. Betty noted how frustrated her mother had seemed as a housewife when she took over the family shop after Betty's father fell ill. She seemed to find her new life outside the home much more gratifying.
 
  
When Betty was young, she was active in [[Marxism|Marxist]] and [[Judaism|Jew]]ish radical circles. She went to high school in Peoria, finishing in 1938. She attended [[Smith College]], where she edited a campus newspaper and graduated ''[[summa cum laude]]'' in 1942. She was also active in her high school newspaper.
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After high school, she left Peoria and attended Smith College, where she edited a campus newspaper and graduated ''summa cum laude'' in 1942. After graduation, she spent a year at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] doing graduate work in [[psychology]]. She declined a Ph.D. fellowship for further study, leaving to work as a journalist for [[left-wing politics|leftist]] and [[labor union|union]] publications. Turning down the fellowship, partly due to lack of confidence about her own path in life as a woman, was a decision that she later regretted. However, while Friedan was doing research for her groundbreaking book ''The Feminine Mystique,'' she utilized her background in psychology, along with her knowledge of statistics and surveys, to bring a keen power of observation to her writing.
After graduation, she spent a year at the [[University of California, Berkeley]] doing graduate work in [[psychology]] but declined a PHD fellowship for further study, leaving to work as a journalist for [[left-wing politics|leftist]] and [[labor union|union]] publications. For some ten years, she worked for two of the most radical labor journals, the Federated Press and the United Electrical Workers' UE News.
 
  
==Career==
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==Career and ''The Feminine Mystique''==
In 1952, Friedan was fired from the union newspaper ''[[UE News]]'' when she was pregnant with her second child. This experience helped to shape her views about the importance of securing rights for women in terms of employment opportunities.
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In 1952, Friedan was fired from the union newspaper ''UE News'' when she was pregnant with her second child. This experience helped to shape her views about the importance of securing rights for women in terms of employment opportunities.
  
For her 15th college reunion in 1957, Friedan conducted a survey of Smith College graduates, focusing on their education, their subsequent experiences and satisfaction with their current lives. Her article on the survey, which lamented the lost potential of her female classmates and present-day female college students, was submitted to women's magazines in 1958. It was rejected by all editors to whom it was submitted, even after Friedan rewrote portions at the request of some of the editors.
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For her fifteenth college reunion in 1957, Friedan conducted a survey of Smith College graduates, focusing on their [[education]] and their subsequent experiences and satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—with their current lives. Her article on the survey, which lamented the lost potential of her female classmates and present-day female college students, was submitted to women's [[magazine]]s in 1958. It was rejected by all editors to whom it was submitted, even after Friedan rewrote portions at the request of some of the editors.
  
===''[[The Feminine Mystique]]''===
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Friedan then decided to rework and expand the article into a book. The book, which took Friedan five years to write, was published in 1963, and was titled ''The Feminine Mystique.'' The book depicts the roles of women in industrial societies, and in particular the full-time homemaker role, which Friedan saw as unfulfilling for some women. The book became an overnight bestseller, and was said to have significantly spurred [[second-wave feminism]] and the modern-day [[Feminist movement|women's movement]].
  
Friedan then decided to rework and expand the article into a book.  The book was published in 1963, and was titled ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]''. In 1964 it became a national bestseller, selling over three million copies. the book  depicted the roles of women in industrial societies, and in particular the full-time homemaker role, which Friedan saw as unfulfilling. The book became an overnight  bestseller, and was said to have significantly spurred the [[Feminist movement|women's movement]]. In 1964 it was number one of the non-fiction bestseller list. It sold over three million copies and instigated a large reaction throughout the nation many from women who women who wrote to Ms. Friedan suggesting the book helped them to make positive choices in their lives which had been experiencing stagnation heretofore.
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The book provoked reaction throughout the country from both men and women. Although controversial, many women wrote to Friedan suggesting that her book helped them to make positive choices in their lives, which had, heretofore, been experiencing stagnation. As for her rationale for writing it, the book's preface reads:
  
Friedan described "the feminie mystique" as:
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<blockquote>My answers may disturb the experts and women alike for they imply social change. But there would be no sense in my writing this book at all if I did not believe that women can affect society as well as be affected by it; that, in the end, a woman, as a man, has the power to choose, and to make her own heaven or hell.<ref>Betty Friedan, ''The Feminist Mystique'' (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001 ISBN 0393322572), 12.</ref></blockquote>
  
 
==NOW and the Women's Movement==
 
==NOW and the Women's Movement==
Friedan co-founded the US [[National Organization for Women]] with 27 other women and men. She wrote its statement of purpose with [[Pauli Murray]], the first African-American female [[Episcopalian|Episcopal]] priest. Friedan was its first president, serving from 1966 to 1970.
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Friedan co-founded the [[U.S.]] [[National Organization for Women]] (NOW) with 27 other women and men and was its first president, serving from 1966 to 1970. She wrote its statement of purpose with [[Pauli Murray]], the first African American female [[Episcopalian|Episcopal]] priest. The first issue that NOW tackled was helping to enforce the ending of sex discrimination, ruled illegal by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The group petitioned the [[Equal Opportunity Employment Commission]] (EEOC) to rescind its guidelines allowing help-wanted ads in newspapers to be segregated into male and female categories. They also supported the cause of airline stewardesses, who in 1967 had a class action suit against the airlines, who were forcing them from their jobs at the age of 32 or when they married.<ref>[http://www.now.org/press/02-06/02-04.html In Memoriam: Betty Friedan.] National Organization for Women, February 4, 2006. Retrieved April 19, 2007.</ref>
[http://www.now.org/press/02-06/02-04.html NOW statement on Friedan's death]
 
  
===Controversy over gay and lesbian rights===
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Friedan helped found [[NARAL Pro-Choice America|NARAL]] (originally National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) in 1969, together with [[Bernard Nathanson]] and [[Lawrence Lader|Larry Lader]]. NARAL's purpose was to work to decriminalize [[abortion]] laws; an issue barely touched on in the late 1960s. Friedan's first address to their convention addressed the rights of women to have unlimited, safe, legal medical access to all forms of [[birth control]] and abortion, if necessary. Although Friedan had her own personal feelings about abortion, she supported a woman's right to choose. Later, she said, "…in recent years I've gotten a little uneasy about the movement's narrow focus on abortion as if it were the single, all important issue for women when it's not.”<ref>Betty Friedan, ''Life So Far'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000 ISBN 0684807890), 377.</ref>
One of the most influential feminists of the late 20th century, Friedan opposed "equating feminism with lesbianism." She later acknowledged that she had been "very square" and was uncomfortable about homosexuality
 
  
===NARAL and abortion===
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==World travels, world figures==
Friedan helped found [[NARAL Pro-Choice America|NARAL]] (originally National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) in 1969 together with [[Bernard Nathanson]] and [[Lawrence Lader|Larry Lader]].  Unlike Nathanson, she always remained a staunch advocate of legal abortion.
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In 1966, Friedan traveled to [[India]] to cover the first female prime minister, [[Indira Gandhi]]. It was from her meeting with Gandhi that Friedan realized how effective women could be in leadership positions without having to assume a male political style. Friedan had a cape, made by the designer Rudi Gernreich, sent to Gandhi as a gift, who invited her back to India. Indira was [[assassination|assassinated]], though, in 1984, before Friedan was able to make a return visit.
  
===World travels, world figures===
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Although they had opposite views, Freidan met with [[Pope Paul VI]] in 1973. Many [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] nuns, were in fact involved with the women's movement in America and were supporters, not of abortion, but of the [[Equal Rights Amendment]]. Despite their differences, Friedan was touched by the Pope's concern and sincerity involving women in the Church.
Indirha Gandhi, the Pope, Simone B.
 
===Marriage and divorce===
 
She married Carl Friedan, a theatre-producer, in 1947 (the "e" was dropped after they were married). Betty Friedan continued to work after marriage (at a time when most women did not), first as a paid employee and after 1952, as a freelance journalist. The Friedans had three children, Emily, Daniel, and Jonathan. One of their sons, [[Daniel Friedan]], is a noted [[theoretical physicist]]. Betty and Carl divorced in May 1969. Betty claimed in her memoir, ''[[Life So Far]]'' (2000), that Carl had beaten her during their marriage; friends such as [[Dolores Alexander]] recalled having to cover up black eyes from Carl's abuse in time for press conferences (Brownmiller 1999, p. 70). Carl Friedan denied abusing Betty in an interview with ''[[TIME]]'' magazine shortly after the book was published, describing the claim as a "complete fabrication" [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05friedan.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5090&en=30472e5004a66ea3&ex=1296795600], and asserted that the bruises Betty took at his hands were from self-defense during fights{{fact}}. Betty later said on ''Good Morning America'', "I almost wish I hadn't even written about it, because it's been sensationalized out of context. My husband was no wife-beater, and I was no passive victim of a wife-beater. We fought a lot, and he was bigger than me." Carl Friedan died in December, 2005.
 
  
quotation|{{Betty Friedan "changed the course of human history almost single-handedly." Her ex-husband, Carl Friedan, believes this; Betty believed it too. This belief was the key to a good deal of Betty's behaviour; she would become breathless with outrage if she didn't get the deference she thought she deserved. Though her behaviour was often tiresome, I figured that she had a point. Women don't get the respect they deserve unless they are wielding male-shaped power; if they represent women they will be called "love" and expected to clear up after themselves. Betty wanted to change that for ever.|Germaine Greer|[http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1703933,00.html "The Betty I knew,"] ''The Guardian'' (February 7, 2006)}}
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==Marriage and divorce==
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She married Carl Friedan, a theatre producer, in 1947. Betty Friedan continued to work after [[marriage]] as a freelance journalist. They had three children, Emily, Daniel, and Jonathan. One of their sons, [[Daniel Friedan]], is a noted theoretical physicist.
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Friedan's husband supported his wife in the writing of her book ''The Feminine Mystique.'' However, the fame and controversy that soon followed, coupled with her activism, put a strain on the marriage. They divorced in May 1969 amidst allegations of abuse on both sides.
  
Indeed, Carl has been quoted as saying "She changed the course of history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, superaggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this." [Ginsberg L., "Ex-hubby fires back at feminist icon Betty," ''New York Post'', 05 July 2000]
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Freidan's temperament has been commented on by many in the women's movement. Her husband was quoted as saying, "She changed the course of history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, superaggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this."<ref>L. Ginsberg, "Ex-hubby fires back at feminist icon Betty," ''New York Post,'' July 5, 2000.</ref>
 
 
Friedan died at her home in [[Washington, D.C.]] on February 4, 2006 of congestive heart failure on her 85th birthday.
 
  
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Later in life, despite their divorce, the Friedans became friends and visited their children and grandchildren together. Carl Friedan died in 2005.
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Betty Friedan died at her home in [[Washington, D.C.]] on February 4, 2006, of congestive heart failure on her 85th birthday.
  
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==Quotations==
  
==Quotations==
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* “The problem that has no name&mdash;which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities&mdash;is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.”<ref>Betty Friedan, ''The Feminist Mystique'' (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001 ISBN 0393322572), 364.</ref>
  
:The problem that has no name &mdash; which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities &mdash; is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
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* “Men weren't really the enemy—they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.”<ref>[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/betty_friedan.html Betty Friedan Quotes.] Brainy Quote. Retrieved April 19, 2007.</ref>
:- Betty Friedan, ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'', 1963. NY: Dell Publ., 1974.
 
  
:Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
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* “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?”<ref>[http://www.answers.com/topic/betty-friedan Betty Friedan.] Answers.com. Retrieved April 19, 2007.</ref>
:-Betty Friedan [http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/betty_friedan.html]
 
  
: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?
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* “If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.”<ref>[http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/betty_friedan.htm Betty Friedan Quotes.] About: Women’s History. Retrieved April 19, 2007.</ref>
:-Betty Friedan [http://www.answers.com/topic/betty-friedan]
 
  
:The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way..The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique, the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession.
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==Notes==
:-Betty Friedan [http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/betty_friedan.htm]
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<references/>
  
:If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.
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==References==
:-Betty Friedan [http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/betty_friedan.htm]
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*Friedan, Betty. ''Life So Far.'' New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. ISBN 0684807890
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*Friedan, Betty. ''The Feminine Mystique.'' W.W. Norton and Company, 2001 (original 1963). ISBN 0393322572
  
 
==Further reading==
 
==Further reading==
 
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*Blau, Justine. 1990. ''Betty Friedan: Feminist (Women of Achievement).'' Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 1-55546-653-2
*Blau, Justine. ''Betty Friedan: Feminist (Women of Achievement)'', Paperback Edition, Chelsea House Publications 1990  ISBN 1-55546-653-2
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*Bohannon, Lisa Frederikson. 2004. ''Women's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan.'' Morgan Reynolds Publishing. ISBN 1-931798-41-9
*Bohannon, Lisa Frederikson. ''Women's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan'', Hardcover Edition, Morgan Reynolds Publishing 2004 ISBN 1-931798-41-9
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*Brownmiller, Susan. 1999. ''In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution.'' The Dial Press. ISBN 0-385-31486-8
*Brownmiller, Susan. [http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/html/in_our_time.html ''In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution''] The Dial Press 1999 ISBN 0-385-31486-8
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*Friedan, Betty. 1978. ''It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement.'' Random House. ISBN 0-394-46398-6
*Friedan, Betty. ''Fountain of Age'', Paperback Edition, Simon and Schuster 1994  ISBN 0-671-898531
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*Friedan, Betty. 1983. ''The Second Stage.'' Abacus.
*Friedan, Betty. ''It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement'', Hardcover Edition, Random House Inc. 1978 ISBN 0-394-46398-6
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*Friedan, Betty. 1994. ''The Fountain of Age.'' Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-898531
*Friedan, Betty. ''Life So Far'', Paperback Edition, Simon and Schuster 2000 ISBN 0-684-80789-0
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*Horowitz, Daniel. 1998. ''Betty Friedan and the Making of'' The Feminine Mystique. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-168-6
*Friedan, Betty. ''The Feminine Mystique'', Hardcover Edition, W.W. Norton and Company Inc. 1963 ISBN 0393084361
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*Hennessee, Judith. 1999. ''Betty Friedan: Her Life.'' Random House. ISBN 0-679-43203-5
*Friedan, Betty. ''The Second Stage'', Paperback Edition, Abacus 1983  ASIN B000BGRCRC
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*Henry, Sondra, and Emily Taitz. 1990. ''Betty Friedan: Fighter for Women's Rights.'' Enslow Publishers. ISBN 0-89490-292-X  
*Horowitz, Daniel. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558491686 "Betty Friedan and the Making of "The Feminine Mystique"], University of Massachusetts Press, 1998, ISBN 1-55849-168-6
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*Meltzer, Milton. 1985. ''Betty Friedan: A Voice for Women's Rights.'' Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-80786-9
*Hennessee, Judith. ''Betty Friedan: Her Life'', Hardcover Edition, Random House 1999 ISBN 0-679-43203-5
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*Sherman, Janann. 2002. ''Interviews with Betty Friedan.'' University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-480-5
*Henry, Sondra. Taitz, Emily. ''Betty Friedan: Fighter For Women's Rights'', Hardcover Edition, Enslow Publishers 1990  ISBN 0-89490-292-X
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*Taylor-Boyd, Susan. 1990. ''Betty Friedan: Voice for Women's Rights, Advocate of Human Rights.'' Gareth Stevens Publishing. ISBN 0-8368-0104-0
*Meltzer, Milton. ''Betty Friedan: A Voice For Women's Rights'', Hardcover Edition, Viking Press 1985 ISBN 0-670-80786-9
 
*Sherman, Janann. ''Interviews With Betty Friedan'', Paperback Edition, University Press of Mississippi 2002 ISBN 1-57806-480-5
 
*Taylor-Boyd, Susan. ''Betty Friedan: Voice For Women's Rights, Advocate of Human Rights'', Hardcover Edition, Gareth Stevens Publishing 1990 ISBN 0-8368-0104-0
 
  
 
==Obituaries==
 
==Obituaries==
*[http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/02/04/friedan.obit.ap/index.html Betty Friedan, philosopher of modern-day feminism, dies] - ''[[CNN]]'', February 4, 2006.
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*Fox, Margalit. February 5, 2006. [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05friedan.html?ex=1296795600&en=30472e5004a66ea3&ei=5090 Betty Friedan, Who Ignited Cause in ''Feminine Mystique,'' Dies at 85.] ''The New York Times.'' Retrieved March 1, 2007.
*[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05friedan.html?ex=1296795600&en=30472e5004a66ea3&ei=5090 Betty Friedan, Who Ignited Cause in 'Feminine Mystique,' Dies at 85] - ''[[The New York Times]]'', February 5, 2006.
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*Sullivan, Patricia. February 4, 2006. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401385.html Voice of Feminism's “Second Wave.”] ''The Washington Post.'' Retrieved March 1, 2007.
*{{cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401385.html|title=Voice of Feminism's 'Second Wave'|date=[[February 5]], [[2006]]|publisher=The Washington Post}}
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*Pollitt, Katha. February 27, 2006. [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060227/pollitt Betty Friedan, 1921–2006.] ''The Nation.'' Retrieved March 1, 2007.
*{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-friedan5feb05,0,2472152.story|title=Catalyst of Feminist Revolution|date=[[February 5]], [[2006]]|publisher=Los Angeles Times}}
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*Feeney, Mark, February 5, 2006. [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/02/05/betty_friedan_feminist_visionary_dies_at_85/ Betty Friedan, feminist visionary, dies at 85.] ''The Boston Globe.'' Retrieved March 1, 2007.
*{{cite news|url=http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/02/05/betty_friedan_feminist_visionary_dies_at_85/|title=Betty Friedan, feminist visionary, dies at 85|date=[[February 5]], [[2006]]|publisher=The Boston Globe}}
 
  
 
== External links ==
 
== External links ==
*[http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=62 National Women's Hall of Fame: Betty Friedan]
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All links retrieved January 21, 2022.
*[http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/friedan.asp American Writers: Betty Friedan]
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* [https://www.womenofthehall.org/?s=betty+friedan&submit=Go Betty Friedan (1921–2006)] – National Women's Hall of Fame.  
*[http://www.encyclopaediajudaica.com/AboutTheEncyclopaedia/SampleContent/FriedanBetty/ Betty Friedan's Biography from The Encyclopaedia Judaica]
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* [http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/friedan.htm Chapter 5 of ''The Feminine Mystique'']
*[http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/friedan.htm The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud] (chapter 5 of ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'')
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* [http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/friedan.htm Betty Friedan Interview] – Public Broadcasting System.  
*[http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/friedan.htm First Measured Century: Interview: Betty Friedan]
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* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=13223958 Betty Friedan] – Find A Grave.  
*[http://www.salon.com/col/horo/1999/01/18horo.html Betty Friedan's secret Communist past], David Horowitz, [[Salon.com|Salon]], January 18, 1999.
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* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1703933,00.html The Betty I knew] – The Guardian Unlimited.
*[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=13223958 Find a Grave: Betty Friedan]
 
*[http://cf.en.cl/ Cheerless Fantasies, A Corrective Catalogue of Errors in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique]
 
*[http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1703933,00.html Anything you can do, Icon do better] &mdash; [[Germaine Greer]] remembers Betty Friedan
 
  
  
[[Category:History and Biography]]
 
 
[[Category:Biography]]
 
[[Category:Biography]]
[[Category:Art, Music, Literature, Sports, and Leisure]]
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[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
  
 
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Revision as of 15:53, 21 January 2022

Betty Friedan, 1960

Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist, activist, and writer. Her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, is considered by many to have given important impetus to the women's rights movement. It was a bestseller in 1964, the year of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, when it sold over three million copies. Her book, geared to the suburban housewife of post–World War II America, and based on a survey she took of her Smith College colleagues, told of women's disaffection with societal roles prescribed for them. In an era when a woman could choose to stay at home or have a career—two paths that were normally deemed mutually exclusive—Friedan's book opened the way for women to rethink their places in the family, the community, and the world at large.

Early life and Education

Friedan was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein on February 4, 1921, in Peoria, Illinois. Her father, Harry Goldstein, owned a jewelry shop and her mother, Miriam Horowitz Goldstein, quit her job as a women's page editor for a newspaper when she became pregnant with Betty. When Betty's mother took over running the shop after her husband fell ill, Betty noted that she seemed happier and more gratified than when she was an at-home mother. Although the family was well-off, her mother's frustration and unhappiness at being a housewife, coupled with the fact that the family was Jewish and did not fit into the cultural milieu of Peoria, led to Betty's feelings of isolation and anger as a teenager.

Betty channeled her dissatisfaction with the status quo into seeking social change. She became active in Marxist and Jewish radical circles. Eventually, she became disillusioned with ideologies, like communism, that did not fit her experience. “But in the America where I lived, abstractions of that world revolution of the masses didn't seem all that real, didn't really work, didn't actually change real life...,” she said in her autobiography. “But later this struggle to make sense of it all made me wary of any tinge of authoritarianism in the women's movement and the danger of perversion of feminism by its own extremists.”[1]

After high school, she left Peoria and attended Smith College, where she edited a campus newspaper and graduated summa cum laude in 1942. After graduation, she spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley doing graduate work in psychology. She declined a Ph.D. fellowship for further study, leaving to work as a journalist for leftist and union publications. Turning down the fellowship, partly due to lack of confidence about her own path in life as a woman, was a decision that she later regretted. However, while Friedan was doing research for her groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique, she utilized her background in psychology, along with her knowledge of statistics and surveys, to bring a keen power of observation to her writing.

Career and The Feminine Mystique

In 1952, Friedan was fired from the union newspaper UE News when she was pregnant with her second child. This experience helped to shape her views about the importance of securing rights for women in terms of employment opportunities.

For her fifteenth college reunion in 1957, Friedan conducted a survey of Smith College graduates, focusing on their education and their subsequent experiences and satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—with their current lives. Her article on the survey, which lamented the lost potential of her female classmates and present-day female college students, was submitted to women's magazines in 1958. It was rejected by all editors to whom it was submitted, even after Friedan rewrote portions at the request of some of the editors.

Friedan then decided to rework and expand the article into a book. The book, which took Friedan five years to write, was published in 1963, and was titled The Feminine Mystique. The book depicts the roles of women in industrial societies, and in particular the full-time homemaker role, which Friedan saw as unfulfilling for some women. The book became an overnight bestseller, and was said to have significantly spurred second-wave feminism and the modern-day women's movement.

The book provoked reaction throughout the country from both men and women. Although controversial, many women wrote to Friedan suggesting that her book helped them to make positive choices in their lives, which had, heretofore, been experiencing stagnation. As for her rationale for writing it, the book's preface reads:

My answers may disturb the experts and women alike for they imply social change. But there would be no sense in my writing this book at all if I did not believe that women can affect society as well as be affected by it; that, in the end, a woman, as a man, has the power to choose, and to make her own heaven or hell.[2]

NOW and the Women's Movement

Friedan co-founded the U.S. National Organization for Women (NOW) with 27 other women and men and was its first president, serving from 1966 to 1970. She wrote its statement of purpose with Pauli Murray, the first African American female Episcopal priest. The first issue that NOW tackled was helping to enforce the ending of sex discrimination, ruled illegal by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The group petitioned the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) to rescind its guidelines allowing help-wanted ads in newspapers to be segregated into male and female categories. They also supported the cause of airline stewardesses, who in 1967 had a class action suit against the airlines, who were forcing them from their jobs at the age of 32 or when they married.[3]

Friedan helped found NARAL (originally National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) in 1969, together with Bernard Nathanson and Larry Lader. NARAL's purpose was to work to decriminalize abortion laws; an issue barely touched on in the late 1960s. Friedan's first address to their convention addressed the rights of women to have unlimited, safe, legal medical access to all forms of birth control and abortion, if necessary. Although Friedan had her own personal feelings about abortion, she supported a woman's right to choose. Later, she said, "…in recent years I've gotten a little uneasy about the movement's narrow focus on abortion as if it were the single, all important issue for women when it's not.”[4]

World travels, world figures

In 1966, Friedan traveled to India to cover the first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi. It was from her meeting with Gandhi that Friedan realized how effective women could be in leadership positions without having to assume a male political style. Friedan had a cape, made by the designer Rudi Gernreich, sent to Gandhi as a gift, who invited her back to India. Indira was assassinated, though, in 1984, before Friedan was able to make a return visit.

Although they had opposite views, Freidan met with Pope Paul VI in 1973. Many Catholic nuns, were in fact involved with the women's movement in America and were supporters, not of abortion, but of the Equal Rights Amendment. Despite their differences, Friedan was touched by the Pope's concern and sincerity involving women in the Church.

Marriage and divorce

She married Carl Friedan, a theatre producer, in 1947. Betty Friedan continued to work after marriage as a freelance journalist. They had three children, Emily, Daniel, and Jonathan. One of their sons, Daniel Friedan, is a noted theoretical physicist.

Friedan's husband supported his wife in the writing of her book The Feminine Mystique. However, the fame and controversy that soon followed, coupled with her activism, put a strain on the marriage. They divorced in May 1969 amidst allegations of abuse on both sides.

Freidan's temperament has been commented on by many in the women's movement. Her husband was quoted as saying, "She changed the course of history almost single-handedly. It took a driven, superaggressive, egocentric, almost lunatic dynamo to rock the world the way she did. Unfortunately, she was that same person at home, where that kind of conduct doesn't work. She simply never understood this."[5]

Later in life, despite their divorce, the Friedans became friends and visited their children and grandchildren together. Carl Friedan died in 2005. Betty Friedan died at her home in Washington, D.C. on February 4, 2006, of congestive heart failure on her 85th birthday.

Quotations

  • “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.”[6]
  • “Men weren't really the enemy—they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.”[7]
  • “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?”[8]
  • “If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.”[9]

Notes

  1. Betty Friedan, Life So Far (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000 ISBN 0684807890), 57.
  2. Betty Friedan, The Feminist Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001 ISBN 0393322572), 12.
  3. In Memoriam: Betty Friedan. National Organization for Women, February 4, 2006. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
  4. Betty Friedan, Life So Far (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000 ISBN 0684807890), 377.
  5. L. Ginsberg, "Ex-hubby fires back at feminist icon Betty," New York Post, July 5, 2000.
  6. Betty Friedan, The Feminist Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001 ISBN 0393322572), 364.
  7. Betty Friedan Quotes. Brainy Quote. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
  8. Betty Friedan. Answers.com. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
  9. Betty Friedan Quotes. About: Women’s History. Retrieved April 19, 2007.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Friedan, Betty. Life So Far. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. ISBN 0684807890
  • Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. W.W. Norton and Company, 2001 (original 1963). ISBN 0393322572

Further reading

  • Blau, Justine. 1990. Betty Friedan: Feminist (Women of Achievement). Chelsea House Publications. ISBN 1-55546-653-2
  • Bohannon, Lisa Frederikson. 2004. Women's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan. Morgan Reynolds Publishing. ISBN 1-931798-41-9
  • Brownmiller, Susan. 1999. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. The Dial Press. ISBN 0-385-31486-8
  • Friedan, Betty. 1978. It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement. Random House. ISBN 0-394-46398-6
  • Friedan, Betty. 1983. The Second Stage. Abacus.
  • Friedan, Betty. 1994. The Fountain of Age. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-898531
  • Horowitz, Daniel. 1998. Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-168-6
  • Hennessee, Judith. 1999. Betty Friedan: Her Life. Random House. ISBN 0-679-43203-5
  • Henry, Sondra, and Emily Taitz. 1990. Betty Friedan: Fighter for Women's Rights. Enslow Publishers. ISBN 0-89490-292-X
  • Meltzer, Milton. 1985. Betty Friedan: A Voice for Women's Rights. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-80786-9
  • Sherman, Janann. 2002. Interviews with Betty Friedan. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-480-5
  • Taylor-Boyd, Susan. 1990. Betty Friedan: Voice for Women's Rights, Advocate of Human Rights. Gareth Stevens Publishing. ISBN 0-8368-0104-0

Obituaries

External links

All links retrieved January 21, 2022.

Credits

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