Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedanwas an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women, which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now fully equal partnership with men."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 February 1921
CityPeoria, IL
CountryUnited States of America
There's no question that the black middle class has benefited greatly by the civil rights movement. But there is a large black underclass that does not have access to jobs. If there's no clear road to income and status except crime, we should expect social problems. You can't solve this problem without addressing the economic issues, and the same is true with gender.
Aging is not 'lost youth,' but a new stage of opportunity and strength. It's a different stage of life, and if you are going to pretend it's youth, you are going to miss it. You are going to miss the surprises, the possibilities, and the evolution that we are just beginning to know about because there are no role models, no guideposts, and no signs.
The media and even, to some degree, leaders of women's organizations don't understand that the women's movement is an absolute part of society now. It is in the consciousness, it is taken for granted. It is part of the way women look at themselves, and women are looked at.
By now, abortion should be obsolete. And I - and probably a lot of other feminists - wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value - it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.
We broke through the feminine mystique and women who were wives, mothers and housewives began to find themselves as people. That didn't mean they stopped, or had to stop, being mothers, wives or even liking their homes.
Feminism or the family? Carried to excess maybe. I have insisted that women cannot be defined solely in those terms. But for a great many women - not all, because we are only beginning to realize and affirm the diversity of women themselves - choosing motherhood makes motherhood itself a liberating choice.
I'm against suppression of pornography. If you suppress guns - yes; if you want to suppress poverty - yes. These are the obscenities, the real brutalization of people. I am almost more outraged by ads for blue jeans or cars that sort of blatantly depict women not only as sex objects, but women that look younger than the age of consent, looking like they've just been raped or asking to be raped-utterly passive sex objects.
Having expressed the rage against the laws and conditions that oppressed them - maybe even excess anger in the beginning was directed at men they came in contact with, because it had been pent up too long - women now come from a new position of easier, more comfortable self-affirmation and empowerment. Women are given to tolerance and are more able to love. I hope it happens also to men.
I love newspapers. I've worked on newspapers, all my life. I've always loved it.
My adolescence was quite miserable, when I look back on it, at least my early part of my adolescence. Because there was anti-Semitism in Peoria, and I didn't feel that when I was in elementary school.
Women today have choices and demand choices, choices to have kids or not and the reproductive technology thereto. And it is a fact [that] most women continue to chose to have children.
This idea that the employment of women, the movement of women outside the home into the work world, and their demand for equality is somehow responsible for increasing juvenile delinquency or the increase in divorce rate, is just so much bullshit.
The situation of women and men is not comparable to worker-boss or black and white.
When [the] life span of America women is approaching eighty years having kids is not going to take it up.