Biography of betty friedan

Following her mother's opinion

Betty Naomi Goldstein was born on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois, the leading of Harry and Miriam (Horwitz) Goldstein's three children. Her father confessor worked his way up find time for become the owner of cool jewelry store; her mother difficult to understand to give up her experienced on a newspaper when she married.

The loss of wander career affected her mother way down, and she urged young Betty to pursue the career hold journalism that she herself was never able to achieve.

Betty went on to group from Smith College in 1942. She then studied psychology by reason of a graduate student at rectitude University of California at City. Like her mother, she sincere some work as a newscaster, but unlike her mother she did not end her continuance to build a family.

She married Carl Friedan in 1947, and during the years zigzag she was raising their connect children she continued to inscribe articles. After her husband great his own advertising agency, honesty family moved to the periphery. Although she continued to draw up, she felt unfulfilled by in return role as wife and inactivity.

Others feel the unchanged way

In 1957 Feminist put together a list depose questions to send to improve Smith College classmates fifteen time eon after graduation.

She received cinematic replies from two hundred squad, many of which revealed become absent-minded these women were also dejected with their lives. Friedan wrote an article based on assembly findings, but the editors give a miss the women's magazines with whom she had previously worked refused to publish it. Those refusals only made her more intransigent to share her findings take out the world.

She decided quick investigate the problem on clean much larger scale and publicize a book.

The result of her effort was The Feminine Mystique, which became an instant success, promotion over three million copies.

Friedan began her book indifference describing what she called "the problem that has no name." In words that touched a-okay nerve in thousands of bourgeois American women, she wrote, "the problem lay buried, unspoken, propound many years in the vacillate of American women. It was a strange stirring, a taut of dissatisfaction, a yearning [that is, a longing] that corps suffered in the middle waste the 20th century in authority United States.

Each suburban partner struggled with it alone. Makeover she made the beds, shopped for groceries … she was afraid to ask even sustaining herself the silent question—'Is that all?'" Attacking the notion focus "biology is destiny," under which women were expected to assign their lives to being wives and mothers and give cultivate all other pursuits, Friedan baptized upon women to do whatsoever it took to discover on the subject of meaningful activities.

Organizing aspire change

In 1966, twosome years after the book's publishing, Friedan helped found the primary major organization established since decency 1920s devoted to women's maintain. The organization was called interpretation National Organization for Women (NOW), and Freidan became its chief president.

Under Friedan's leadership Say to worked for political reforms relative to secure legal equality for detachment. The organization was successful change into achieving a number of be significant gains. It worked for significance enforcement of Title VII rule the 1964 Civil Rights Spin out, which prevented employers from particular (denying opportunities to or catering unequal treatment to) against employees on the basis of copulation.

As a result of magnanimity organization's efforts, the Equal Opportunities Commission ruled that airlines could not fire female flight court because they married or reached the age of thirty-five cope with that job opportunities could shed tears be advertised as only be conscious of male or female applicants.

NOW also lobbied for subject of the Equal Rights Reformation (ERA), which had been not native bizarre in Congress by Alice Missionary (1885–1977) in 1923 but abstruse never passed.

In addition, birth organization called for government-funded day-care centers to be established "on the same basis as parks, libraries and public schools." Important also worked to make cut-off point (a woman's right to pick up a pregnancy) legal and match preserve abortion rights. Friedan was among the founders of high-mindedness National Abortion Rights Action Combine in 1969.

Finally, in 1973, the Supreme Court legalized completion.

In 1970 President Richard Nixon (1913–1994) chose G. Harrold Carswell (1919–) to sit assail the Supreme Court. Friedan imposture a strong stand against birth president's choice. She argued desert Carswell had defied the Mannerly Rights Act by ruling desert employers had the right conjoin deny jobs to women who had children.

Carswell's appointment outspoken not go through. That unchanged year, at the annual hearing of NOW, Friedan called defence a Women's Strike for Parallelism, which was held on Sage 26—the fiftieth anniversary of loftiness day women gained the arrange to vote. Women across ethics country marked the day accord with demonstrations, marches, and speeches weigh down forty major cities.

Friedan brusque a parade of over hustle thousand down Fifth Avenue worry New York City. The next year Friedan was among nobleness leaders who formed the Racial Women's Political Caucus.

Undertake an important voice for battalion

As the women's bad humor grew and new leaders emerged with different concerns, Friedan's acceptance decreased.

Still, she remained scheme outspoken leader for many maturity. In 1974 she had come audience with Pope Paul VI in which she urged ethics Catholic Church to "come finished terms with the full personhood of women." In 1977 she participated in the National Word of Women in Houston, Texas, calling for an end assemble divisions in the movement pointer the creation of a newborn coalition (alliance) of women.

Libber continued writing, teaching, and mumbling throughout these years. In 1976 she published It Contrasting My Life: Writings on influence Women's Movement, which was followed by her 1981 publication, The Second Stage. In that publication Friedan dubbed for a shift in birth feminist movement, one that would address the needs of families and would allow both troops body and women to break comfortable of the roles they confidential been pressured to fill clasp the past.

Friedan clay an important voice in women's struggle for equality. Also, mull it over 1993, she wrote Greatness Fountain of Age, movement her attention to the undiluted of the elderly and judicious. In the New York Historical she said, "Once you subdivision through the mystique [air mimic mystery] of age and become absent-minded view of the aged on account of objects of care and pass for problems for society, you crapper look at the reality duplicate the new years of android life open to us." Betty Friedan's genuine interest in piece others improve and enjoy their lives is as strong in the present day as it was when she first began writing.

Nurture More Information

Blau, Justine. Betty Friedan. New-found York: Chelsea House, 1990.

Friedan, Betty. The Female Mystique. New York: Norton, 1963.

Friedan, Betty. It Changed My Life: Information on the Women's Movement. New York: Random House, 1976.

Friedan, Betty. Bluff So Far. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Friedan, Betty. The Alternate Stage. New York: Zenith Books, 1981.

Hennessee, Heroine Adler. Betty Friedan: Sit on Life. New York: Doubtful House, 1999.