Betty Friedan (1921–2006,) née Bettye Naomi Goldstein, was an American author and a feminist icon. She was one of the most authoritative voices and recognizable activists in the women’s movement.
Born in Peoria, Illinois, Friedan was educated at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She then spent a year studying psychology at Berkeley but left to work as a journalist for left-wing publications.
Friedan’s groundbreaking The Feminine Mystique (1963) explored the causes of modern women’s frustrations in traditional roles. The book is often ascribed with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century.
Friedan was a founder and the first president of the National Association for Women (1966) and headed the National Women’s Strike for Equality (1970.) In The Second Stage (1981,) she emphasized the importance of both new and traditional female roles. She also wrote It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (1977) and The Fountain of Age (1993,) exploring the virtues and possibilities of old age.
Friedan’s autobiography is Life So Far (2000.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Betty Friedan
It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.
—Betty Friedan
A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man’s advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.
—Betty Friedan
Topics: Sex
It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.
—Betty Friedan
Topics: Relationships
Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
—Betty Friedan
Topics: Age
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