Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan was a writer and feminist who helped lead the women’s movement. She was born on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois. Her dad was a jeweler who immigrated from Russia, and her mom, an immigrant from Hungary, worked as a journalist. In 1942, Friedan graduated from Smith College with a degree in psychology. After spending a year at UC Berkeley for a graduate fellowship, she moved to New York City. In 1947, she married Carl Friedan (divorced 1969) and had 3 children with him. When the couple moved to the suburbs in 1956, Friedan primarily became a housewife, although she continued writing freelance pieces for women’s magazines.

In the late 1950s, Friedan began conducting research to write a book. At a 15-year reunion, she gave a survey to her old classmates from Smith College. The results showed that, like Friedan herself, most women felt deeply dissatisfied and limited as suburban housewives. Over the next 5 years, Friedan studied this topic extensively. Her work included issuing more questionnaires, traveling across the country to conduct interviews, and discussing results with psychologists and behavioral students. She intertwined her findings with her personal experiences and finally published her landmark book, titled The Feminine Mystique, in 1963. Although controversial, the book was an immediate bestseller. In it, Friedan presented the idea that the restricted role of wife-mother left women with a feeling of personal worthlessness. She said that women were forced to be intellectually, economically, and emotionally reliant on others. Further, society expected a woman to achieve personal fulfillment vicariously through her husband and children. Because of this, Friedan argued, women were unable to do genuine, creative, and self-defining work.

Three years after publishing The Feminine Mystique, Friedan co-founded and became the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW). The objective of this civil rights group was to achieve equal opportunity for women. It’s mission statement, which was authorized by Friedan, was “…to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” NOW’s first and foremost goal was to ensure that the Title VII guarantee of equality in employment was enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Within the organization, some of Friedan’s other campaigns were aimed at achieving greater representation for women in government, creating child-care centers for working mothers, and legalizing abortion. Younger and more-radical groups later formed and drew attention, but NOW was consistently the largest and most effective organization throughout the women’s movement.

Although Friedan stepped down as president of NOW in March 1970, she stayed active and continued to be an important advocate for women’s rights. She helped organize the Women’s Strike for Equality in August 1970 and helped lead the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Later, Friedan played a key role in establishing the National Women’s Political Caucus and also became director of the First Women’s Bank and Trust Company. After the 1970s, she wrote and published several books, taught at national universities, and frequently lectured at women’s conferences around the world. Friedan sadly passed away in 2006 due to congestive heart failure.

Sources:

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/betty-friedan

https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Organization-for-Women

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Betty-Friedan