Betty Friedan

as its first president. Betty fought for abortion rights by establishing the national association for the repeal of abortion laws in the year 1969. Betty than helped to create the national Women's political caucus in 1971. In 1982 Betty created her second book, “The second stage”. It created to help women balance between work and home demands. When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman. - Betty Friedan. To this very day,…

nonetheless ballsy, Mrs. Betty Friedan. To understand and appreciate Mrs. Betty Friedan fully, we have to look at the full outline of her life. Bettye Naomi Goldstein was born in Peoria, Illinois, on February 4th, 1921. Her life was undoubtedly filled with moments of achieved success. The young scholar received her Bachelor’s in Psychology at Smith College in 1942. Quickly after receiving that…

Goldstein, better known as Betty Friedan, published her manifesto The Feminine Mystique. Friedan was born in 1921, forty-two years before she wrote her absolute phenomenon that would leave an imprint on the world forever. Growing up, Friedan knew she was unlike the other girls who wore dresses and did work that women were “supposed” to do. Perceiving courageous jobs such as an activist, a well-known author, and the first president of the National Organization for Women, Friedan knew exactly how…

The Journey of Growing Old The American writer Betty Friedan once said: "Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength." It was interesting to have the opportunity of interviewing someone in the late adulthood stage because it gave me insights to understand my mother and the challenges she may be facing during her journey of growing old. The person I interviewed for this paper is a white male age 58 named Wayne. Wayne was born in Seattle, Washington. He was raised in a…

social norms and change American from within. The Feminine Mystique, written in 1963 by Betty Friedan, was a very popular book that put on display the public opinion about women’s rights at the time (Evelyn Reed 1964). It was one of the most influential, nonfiction books during the 1960s and continues to have influence to this day. The Feminine Mystique showed that a second wave of feminism was beginning. Betty rejected the idea of the Feminine Mystique because of the ideal that the common role…

Published in 1963, Betty amplifies the voice of hundreds of thousands of married women, unsatisfied with what roles they are pressured to play, which was dubbed: “The problem that has no name”. This problem represents a widespread unhappiness of women in marriages. A problem that is powerful enough to relate to women from many time periods and places. Betty writes, “Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped…

wishes to be free of misogyny and become successful on her own in order to live in the affluent community of her dreams. In an excerpt from Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, she writes that instead of having dreams, “all [a woman] had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children” (Friedan). Friedan uses sarcastic irony to express the ridiculousness of the idea that women should not pursue the American Dream. This is parallel to…

Pitman-Hughes would not have recognized first-wave feminism as feminism at all. Sure, they were winning the vote, but it was such a predominately ethnocentric movement, that is barely fits today’s definition of feminism, let alone the second-wave. Betty Friedan, a feminist…

women suppressed urges to speak their opinions on issues affecting them to avoid being viewed as unfeminine, or possibly even troubled. The “hidden and unspoken” problem that Friedan makes apparent is the concealed feminism in American culture which naturally flows from human natures constant desire for the “next best thing” (Betty…

Joanne Meyerwitz writes as a critic of the The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, in her writings titled Beyond the Feminine Mystique. Meyerwitz mentions that while The Feminine Mystique is important for bringing about feminism out of the nuclear family, the sources that Friedan uses to provide evidence of her claims are not nearly as convincing as one would think. Meyerwitz believes that Friedan, and as such many historians who followed her example, puts too much emphasis on “her…