Kristen Emerson
April 17, 2013
WGS 222
Prof. Potuchek
Activist Biographies: Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan, the polarizing leader of the second wave of feminism, was born on
February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois to Harry and Miriam Goldstein. Her father was an immigrant
who ran a store, her mother a housewife who had worked on a newspaper before her marriage.
She was the oldest of three children, and grew up with what she described as a fairly miserable
childhood. Her mother often picked on her husband and her children, and was consistently
miserable throughout her childhood, and was especially hard on young Betty. Betty felt she
understood (at least later) why her mother felt that way, because she didn’t have work to do and
was not fulfilled by only her family life. Betty excelled at school early on, and felt like it was her
sanctuary away from her home life. When she got to high school, she was ostracized for her
intelligence, but found sanctuary in the newspaper.
After high school, Betty attended Smith College, where she felt she “found herself”.
Upon graduation, in 1942, she began attending Berkley on a psychology program. She left in
1943, despite earning a Science Fellowship. Instead, she moved to Greenwich Village and began
working on researching radical movements for various newspapers. In 1946, she met Carl
Friedan and married him a year later, because of her mother’s disapproval. She worked for the
first couple years of her marriage, until 1949 when she gave birth to their first child, Daniel, and
requested maternity leave. Her leave was supposed to last until September 1949, but they forced
her back early. Despite this, she loved being a mother, but her marriage was unhappy. Even so,
they tried for a second child, and when she became pregnant, she was fired for “no apparent
reason”, only finding out later that it was because the newspaper was not prepared to give her the
time off. She was slightly relieved, because it took the pressure of trying to be a career woman
and a mother off her back. She wanted to be the happy housewife, but felt anxious and
exhausted.
At her 15 year college reunion, she was asked to take a survey of her class. She did it
because she felt guilty that she hadn’t done much with her degree, and found that 89% of the
women in her class felt the same way, because they’d all become housewives, and that they all
felt vaguely empty and as if they were searching for something. After moving to suburbia, she
found in her new friends a general feeling of emptiness, which she realized was common. She
named it “the problem that has no name”, and felt inspired to write about it. The book became
The Feminine Mystique, which became an instant international bestseller in 1963. It also was
seen as the launching of the second wave of feminism. The book claimed that women deserved
to find fulfillment outside of the home, and that they needed education and training to do so.
Although the book was a success, the Friedan family (which now included a third child) was
exiled from suburbia. Betty was also in constant conflict with her husband, who hit her on
occasion – but as she noted in her autobiography, domestic violence was an accepted part of
female life. They did not divorce, however, until 1969.
When she realized what she could do for the feminist movement, she helped found the
National Organization for Women (NOW), in 1966, serving as president until 1970. Also in
1970, she organized a national Strike for Equality on the 50th anniversary of the 19th amendment.
It was a huge success. In 1976, she published It Changed My Life: Writing on the Women’s
Movement, essays and letters about her time so far in the movement, including reactions from
women around the country to The Feminine Mystique. She also felt that the movement was
becoming too polarized; claiming true feminists should focus only on the needs of women. She
also published The Second Stage in 1981, critiquing the polarization of the feminist movement.
This was the book that broke her away from the movement, as activists felt she was now out of
touch, which was a relief to her. She would always support them, but went on to write on other
issues, such as aging in her 1993 book The Fountain of Age and Beyond Gender: The New
Politics of Work and Family in 1997. Her final book was her autobiography published in 2000,
Life So Far. She died in 2006, of congestive heart failure, but will always be remembered for the
book that started an entire, continuous movement.
Bibliography
“Betty Friedan.” Newsmakers. Detroit: Gale, 1994. Biography in Context.
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?failOverType=
&query=&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Referenc
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_within_results=&action=e&catId=GALE|AAA000193653&activityType=&scanId=&document
Id=GALE|K1618000225
Friedan, Betty. Life So Far. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Perry, Marilyn Elizabeth. “Betty Friedan: Overview.” Feminist Writers. Ed. Pamela
Kester-Shelton. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Biography in Context.
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?failOver
Type=&query=&prodId=BIC1&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&display
GroupName=Reference&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=true&displayGroups=&sort
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d=GALE|H1420003014