goodbye, betty

The Feminist Majority Foundation just announced that Betty Friedan died today at the age of 85. I pinched their images for this post. To see their story, click here.

I wrote the biographical entry for Betty Friedan for The Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (Edited by Immanuel Ness, New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2004: pp. 398) and I think it's a good time to reprint it here:

Friedan, Betty (1921 - 2006)

Bettye Naomi Goldstein was born to Miriam (Horwitz) and Harry Goldstein on February 4, 1921, in Peoria, Illinois. Her father was a successful jeweler and her mother had, prior to the birth of her daughter, worked for a newspaper. A psychology student at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, Betty (who dropped the “e” from her name during school) was a star student in psychology and a solid writer: she sat as editor-in-chief of the college’s newspaper and graduated summa cum laude in 1942. She would later be awarded an honorary degree from Smith in 1975. In 1943, she continued her studies as a doctoral student in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. However, after receiving (and then declining) a prestigious scholarship from the institution, she dropped out of the program and moved to New York City to pursue a career in journalism. She married Carl Friedan (divorced 1969) in 1947, and settled into the role of suburban housewife and mother to three children while also working as an occasional freelance journalist for the Federated Press, the labor press, and a variety of popular women’s magazines including Good Housekeeping.

In 1957, in light of her fifteenth class reunion, Friedan designed and sent a questionnaire to her Smith College contemporaries, asking whether or not they felt content with their lives since college. She received in depth responses from over two hundred women, and the results were extraordinary: the majority felt unfulfilled, and many outlined the details of the dissatisfaction with their lives. The common thread among them all was an effort to conform to their supposedly “natural” gender roles while simultaneously harboring a frustration and a desire for something more. Finding commonality among her former classmates not only legitimized her own feelings of discontent in her marriage and her life, but also led to an extension of research into the topic. She expanded her study dramatically, formulating more questionnaires and surveys, conducting interviews, and consulting with psychologists and behaviorists. The results of her investigations would provide the data for what would become a landmark work: The Feminine Mystique.

Published in 1963, The Feminine Mystique was a combination of the results of her qualitative research and her own stifling experience in the domestic realm. In it, Friedan defined and described “the problem that had no name,” that women were the victims of deception, expected to glean happiness and fulfillment from their sole role as caregiver of their husbands and children. According to Friedan, the glorification of “wife” and “mother” not only led to frustration and a loss of self-esteem, but also prevented women from pursuing other work and/or creative self-expression. Translated in multiple languages, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was an almost instant bestseller, and has since been credited with inspiring the second wave of the women’s movement in North America.

The Feminine Mystique sparked controversy over women’s “place” in American society, and the groundbreaking work launched Friedan into the public spotlight soon after. Appearing on the radio, television, and at academic conferences, she rapidly established herself as a forerunner in the women’s movement and a harbinger of social change. By the mid 1960s, Friedan had become a household name, and she had joined forces with other women interested in the advancement of women’s rights. In October of 1966, at the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women in Washington, D.C., she and twenty-eight other women co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW). As its first president (until 1970), Friedan fought for civil rights and directed campaigns to challenge stereotypes of women in the media, to improve women’s political participation, and to develop accessible childcare. NOW was also at the forefront of the fight to legalize abortion, and Friedan helped found the National Abortion Rights Action League in 1969. During her last year as NOW’s leader, she led the Women’s Strike for Equality, a public and vocal commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of women’s suffrage in America.

Friedan continued working for women’s rights by assisting in the establishment of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, as well as helping with the organization of the International Feminist Congress and the creation of the first Women’s Bank in New York in 1973. Soon after, she turned her attention to writing (she was a regular columnist for McCall’s magazine) and teaching. Her teaching posts included the New School for Social Research and Temple University in 1972, Yale in 1974, and Queen’s College in 1975. A winner of multiple awards and honours (including the Eleanor Roosevelt Leadership Award in 1989, an induction in the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993, and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Arts in 1998), Betty Friedan has, through years of activism and writing, been established as one of the second wave women’s movements most effectual leaders. Her memoir, Life So Far, was published in 2000.

Selected Related Works:

Friedan, Betty:
The Feminine Mystique. 1963.
It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement. 1976.
The Second Stage. 1981.
The Fountain of Age. 1993.
Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family. 1997.
Life So Far: A Memoir. 2000.

Hennessee, Judith. Betty Friedan: Her Life. Penguin, 1999.

Horowitz, Daniel. Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism. 2000.

Bitch PhD also posted a short but sweet nod to Friedan's passing, worth a look as well.