Friedan, Betty

views updated

Betty Friedan

Born February 4, 1921
Peoria, Illinois

Writer, women's rights activist

The feminist movement began sweeping American society in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It consisted of people who believed in equal rights for both sexes. It might have come about without Betty Friedan, but her presence within and her impact on the movement were vast. Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique (1963) clearly defined many issues concerning women's rights. Such ideas were central to what came to be known as the Women's Liberation Movement.

"The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years.… As [each suburban wife] made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, … 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

Early education and work

Betty Friedan was born Betty (possibly Bettye) Naomi Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois, on February 4, 1921. Her birth was less than one year after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allowed women across the United States the right to vote. Her father, Harry, was a jeweler. Miriam (Horowitz), her mother, had quit her job as the women's page editor of a local newspaper upon her marriage and became a homemaker. Miriam Goldstein missed her former job and encouraged Betty to attend college and become a journalist.

Friedan majored in psychology at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She graduated summa cum laude, which is Latin for "with the highest praise," in 1942. At Smith, she established a literary magazine, edited the school newspaper, and became preoccupied with social justice issues and the plight of American workers. She started graduate work in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. Friedan won a research scholarship that would have fully funded her studies, but after one year she quit graduate school and moved to New York City. Her first job there was reporting on labor-related issues for a small newspaper. Despite her good work, Friedan was forced to relinquish the job to a returning soldier at the end of World War II (1939–45).

The war had a major effect on women in terms of working outside the home as well as the types of jobs they could do. When men went off to fight the war, women were needed to assume many of the jobs left open by men. Some women worked in war munitions or bomber factories, others became reporters, accountants, farmers, and even baseball players. When the war ended and the soldiers returned home, many women were expected or forced to give up their jobs to them. Some women found other work, while others returned to life as homemakers. For many, the accomplishments they felt as working women stayed with them forever. Such feelings prompted some women to seek careers in addition to having families.

Work and family

In 1947, Betty married Carl Friedan, a theater producer and advertising executive. For a time, she worked for a labor union paper. When she became pregnant, she went on maternity leave and came back to her job after giving birth. Upon learning that she was pregnant with her second child in 1949, Friedan asked for another maternity leave. Instead of granting her request, the paper laid her off. Her union refused to come to her assistance, even though her contract allowed for the maternity leave. Friedan settled into a life as a homemaker, mother, and occasional freelance writer for women's magazines. Carl and Betty Friedan eventually moved to the suburbs of New York. They had a third child together, but their marriage did not last. They divorced in 1969.

Friedan's married life was like that of many people who were married in the 1940s through the 1960s. In the 1940s, husbands provided most of the money for the family, and, upon marrying, women were expected to stay home to tend to household chores and raise children. In the 1940s and 1950s, some women attended university not to prepare for a career, but rather to find a "college man" to wed. Such women were looking for a man whose education would enable him to secure a high-paying job that would adequately support a family and a suburban-American lifestyle. Some women did enter the workforce briefly, but many, like Friedan, eventually left their jobs to take care of their growing families.

Evolution of a book

Being a homemaker and mother left Friedan feeling unfulfilled. She viewed her choices and those of other women as very limited. To see if others felt the same way, Friedan wrote a questionnaire and distributed it to her former college classmates in 1957. She discovered that many shared her frustration. She then sent out more detailed surveys and carried out interviews. Friedan discussed her findings with psychologists and behavioral experts, people who specialize in analyzing human behavior. Her findings, plus her own ideas and experiences, formed the basis for her first book, The Feminine Mystique (1963). Her book immediately sparked controversy. It became a bestseller, with more than three million copies in circulation. The work was translated into thirteen languages. More importantly, it helped spark the women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Feminine Mystique was read and taken to heart by a generation of women who agreed with Friedan's point of view. At the same time, other readers with more conservative and traditional views opposed Friedan's work. They claimed that her ideas would upset the framework of American society. As of the early 2000s, the ideas in The Feminine Mystique continued to be approved by some and criticized by others. But over the years since its publication, the long-lasting and far-reaching impact of the book has been significant. The Feminine Mystique is looked upon as one of the most significant books published in the United States during the twentieth century.

Devotion to "The Movement"

In 1966, Friedan was one of the co-founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW). A political action group, NOW formed to win equal rights for women. As the group's first president, Friedan set out to integrate women into the economic and political mainstream of America. She organized drives to elect more women to political office, establish child-care facilities for working mothers, and halt the publication of job notices that specified gender. At the time, abortion was illegal. In 1969, Friedan also co-founded the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL).

"The Problem That Has No Name"

In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan explored how women fit into American society in the fifteen years following the end of World War II. She argued that women were oppressed by what she called the "mystique of feminine fulfillment." This was the false notion that personal satisfaction came only through what she believed was a false femininity. According to traditional values, women were expected to be good wives and mothers and have pride in the accomplishments of their husbands and children. In this regard, they could only experience fulfilling lives if they married and became mothers. Women as a group also were discriminated against socially and in the job market. They were stereotyped in popular culture and were depicted in television shows and commercials as happy homemakers who were forever baking cookies for their children or mindlessly smiling as they ironed clothes or washed floors. In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan labeled this dilemma "the problem that has no name."

Friedan remained in the top position at NOW until 1970, when she left to help coordinate the Women's Strike for Equality, a national women's rights protest. It was held on August 26, 1970, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Friedan also became one of the more high-profile supporters for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. The proposed constitutional amendment would make all individuals equal before the law regardless of gender. In 1971, she became a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus. The group's goal was to increase women's involvement in American politics and to support women interested in gender equality in their efforts to win public office. Two years later, she was named director of the First Women's Bank and Trust Company, founded and operated by women. At the time, nearly all commercial banks showed prejudice against women who attempted to borrow money or secure mortgages. Her activism on behalf of her gender extended beyond the borders of the United States. She lobbied the United Nations to proclaim 1975 as the "International Year of Women." In 1989, she co-founded Women,Men, and Media, a yearly analysis of the manner in which women are reported on in newspapers, television, radio, and other media.

On occasion Friedan's ideas have conflicted with those of other women's movement leaders. She has maintained that the women's movement should focus on basic issues affecting all women, such as equal pay for equal work. Her vision was that women and men should cooperate with each other. In the early 1970s, she became distressed by the more radical feminists who pitted women against men in an attempt to gain equality. Nevertheless, Friedan has continued to work toward her own ideals.

More books written and awards won

Although The Feminine Mystique was Friedan's most notable book, it was not her only one. It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement, describing her involvement in the movement, was published in 1976. The Second Stage, published in 1981, reported on the significance of the movement to that date. The Fountain of Age, published in 1993 when Friedan was in her early seventies, explored what it means to enter one's "golden years" in a culture that reveres the young and sees no value in growing older. Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family (1997) explored and questioned the effect of the women's movement on relations between the sexes. In 2002, Friedan wrote a memoir, Life So Far. It was written in part as a response to two biographies—Judith Hennessee's Betty Friedan, Her Life and Daniel Horowitz's Betty Friedan and the Making of "The Feminine Mystique." Friedan felt these books portrayed her in an unflattering light.

Friedan also has written on the subject of feminism for dozens of publications. For example, between 1970 and 1973, she wrote a column for the woman's magazine McCall's. Titled "Betty Friedan's Notebook," it described her efforts to publicize the women's movement across the world. She lectured extensively around the world and held visiting university professorships. She taught at New York University, the University of Southern California, and other institutions of higher learning. She was a Chubb Fellow at Yale University and Adjunct Scholar at the Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution. Her many awards include the Wilhelmina Drucker Prize for contribution to the emancipation of men and women (1971); the Humanist of the Year award (1975); and the Eleanor Roosevelt Leadership Award (1989). In 1994, Columbia University granted her an honorary doctorate.