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Betty Friedan

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Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was a Jewish American feminist, social activist and writer.

Education and family

Friedan was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois. Her father was once a button hawker, but eventually owned a jeweler's shop; her mother quit a job as a newspaper's women's page editor to become a housewife.

When Betty was young, she was active in Marxist and Jewish 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.

After graduation, she spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley, doing graduate work in psychology, but declined a scholarship for further study, and left Berkeley to work as a journalist for leftist and union publications.

She married Carl Friedman, a theatre-producer, in 1947 (the "m" was dropped after they were married). They divorced in May 1969. Betty stated 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 claims as a "complete fabrication," , and claimed that the bruises Betty took at his hands were from self-defense during fights. 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.

The Friedans had three children. One of their sons, Daniel Friedan, is a noted theoretical physicist.

Betty died at her home in Washington, D.C. on February 4, 2006 of congestive heart failure. It was her 85th birthday.

Career

In 1952, Friedan was fired from the union newspaper UE News when she was pregnant with her second child.

For her 15th college reunion in 1957, Friedan conducted a survey of Smith College graduates, focusing on their education, their subsequent experiences, and the satisfaction with their present lives. Her article on the survey, which lamented the lost potential of her classmates and present-day women 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.

The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan, 1964

Friedan then decided to rework and expand the article into a book. The book was published in 1963, and was titled The Feminine Mystique. It depicted the roles of women in industrial societies, and in particular the full-time homemaker role, which Friedan saw as stifling. The book became a bestseller, which some people suggest was the impetus for the second wave of feminism, and significantly spurred the women's movement.

Other works

Friedan's other books include The Second Stage, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement, and The Fountain of Age. Her autobiography, Life so Far, was published in 2000.

NOW

Friedan co-founded the U.S. National Organization for Women with 27 other women and men. She wrote its statement of purpose with Pauli Murray, the first African-American female Episcopal priest. Friedan was its first president, serving from 1966 to 1970.

NARAL and abortion

Friedan helped found NARAL (originally National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) in 1969 together with Bernard Nathanson and Larry Lader. Unlike Nathanson she remained her whole life a staunch partisan of the right to induced abortion.

Controversy over gay and lesbian rights

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.. She is said to have coined the anti-lesbian phrase "Lavender Menace" during a 1969 National Organization for Women (NOW) meeting. Lavender Menace refers to lesbians who want to equate lesbianism to feminism and was later used by gay rights activists as the original name of the pro-lesbian group "Radicalesbians".

However, Betty Friedan subsequently acknowledged her error. At the Women's Conference held in Huston, Texas in 1977 to ratify the United Nations 'Platform for Women' she seconded the motion supporting lesbian rights. In the huge vellodrome where the conference was held, the air was electric. 10,000 women debated the resolutions back and forth. Rumours of 'right wing women' having been 'bussed in' from around the country meant that there was great apprehension as to the outcome of voting. When Betty Friedan took the microphone to pledge her support for the lesbian rights motion, women cheered, some cried, and all around the venue, thousands of lavender balloons rose from the floor, drifting triumphantly towards the ceiling. Despite opposition from the right, the motion was overwhelmingly passed. This was a defining moment for the US Women's Movement, for lesbian rights, and for Betty Friedan.

Temperament

The New York Times obituary for Friedan noted that she was "famously abrasive" and that she could be "thin-skinned and imperious, subject to screaming fits of temperament". And in February 2006, shortly after Friedan's death, the controversial feminist writer Germaine Greer published an article in Guardian , in which she described Friedan as egotistic, personally demanding, and often selfish, focusing on repeated incidents during a tour of Iran in 1972. Greer wrote of her outbursts,

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, "The Betty I knew," The Guardian (February 7, 2006)

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."

Quotes

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, 1963. NY: Dell Publ., 1974.
The shallow unreality, immaturity, promiscuity, lack of lasting human satisfaction that characterize the homosexual's sex life usually characterize all his life and interests.
- Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963. NY: Dell Publ., 1974.

Further reading

  • Blau, Justine. Betty Friedan: Feminist (Women of Achievement), Paperback Edition, Chelsea House Publications 1990 ISBN 1555466532
  • Bohannon, Lisa Frederikson. Women's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan, Hardcover Edition, Morgan Reynolds Publishing 2004 ISBN 1931798419
  • Brownmiller, Susan. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution The Dial Press 1999 ISBN 0385314868
  • Friedan, Betty. Fountain of Age, Paperback Edition, Simon and Schuster 1994 ISBN 0671898531
  • Friedan, Betty. It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement, Hardcover Edition, Random House Inc. 1978 ISBN 0394463986
  • Friedan, Betty. Life So Far, Paperback Edition, Simon and Schuster 2000 ISBN 0684807890
  • Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique, Hardcover Edition, W.W. Norton and Company Inc. 1963 ISBN 0393084361
  • Friedan, Betty. The Second Stage, Paperback Edition, Abacus 1983 ASIN B000BGRCRC
  • Horowitz, Daniel. "Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America" American Quarterly, Volume 48, Number 1, March 1996, pp. 1-42
  • Hennessee, Judith. Betty Friedan: Her Life, Hardcover Edition, Random House 1999 ISBN 0679432035
  • Henry, Sondra. Taitz, Emily. Betty Friedan: Fighter For Women's Rights, Hardcover Edition, Enslow Publishers 1990 ISBN 089490292X
  • Meltzer, Milton. Betty Friedan: A Voice For Women's Rights, Hardcover Edition, Viking Press 1985 ISBN 0670807869
  • Sherman, Janann. Interviews With Betty Friedan, Paperback Edition, University Press of Mississippi 2002 ISBN 1578064805
  • Taylor-Boyd, Susan. Betty Friedan: Voice For Women's Rights, Advocate of Human Rights, Hardcover Edition, Gareth Stevens Publishing 1990 ISBN 0836801040

Obituaries

External links

Preceded by(none) President of the National Organization for Women
1966 - 1970 		Succeeded byAileen Hernandez
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