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
Neither woman nor man lives by work, or love, alone ... The human self defines itself and grows through love and work: All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that.
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 would have much rather been in the jalopy with the kids, going to Hunt's for hamburgers. But, when I entered high school, all my friends got into sororities and fraternities and I didn't.
Most of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.
I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.
Being Jewish, you didn't get into a sorority. So I really was much more outgoing and gregarious. I really didn't want to spend an Emily Dickinson adolescence reading poetry on gravestones, which I did.
Diversity has got to be a part of modern feminism, and I think that my feminism is stronger because its an inclusive thing. I won't be backed into a corner that polarizes me against other women. And I wished they wouldn't be either.
I wouldn't be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.
We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.'
Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world.
It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
Getting older is an adventure, not a problem.
Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.