Betty Friedan Quotes

Betty Friedan was an American feminist writer and activist. 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 [in] fully equal partnership with men."

In 1970, after stepping down as NOW's first president, Friedan organized the nationwide Women's Strike for Equality on August 26, the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote. The national strike was successful beyond expectations in broadening the feminist movement; the march led by Friedan in New York City alone attracted over 50,000 people. In 1971, Friedan joined other leading feminists to establish the National Women's Political Caucus. Friedan was also a strong supporter of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution that passed the United States House of Representatives and Senate following intense pressure by women's groups led by NOW in the early 1970s. Following Congressional passage of the amendment, Friedan advocated for ratification of the amendment in the states and supported other women's rights reforms: she founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws but was later critical of the abortion-centered positions of many liberal feminists.

Regarded as an influential author and intellectual in the United States, Friedan remained active in politics and advocacy until the late 1990s, authoring six books. As early as the 1960s Friedan was critical of polarized and extreme factions of feminism that attacked groups such as men and homemakers. One of her later books, The Second Stage , critiqued what Friedan saw as the extremist excesses of some feminists. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. February 1921 – 4. February 2006   •   Other names بتی فریدان, ബെറ്റി ഫ്രീഡൻ, ベティ・フリーダン
Betty Friedan photo

Works

The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan
The Fountain of Age
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan: 33   quotes 9   likes

Famous Betty Friedan Quotes

“It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.”

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for Women".

“The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way.”

Interviews with Betty Friedan, Janann Sherman, ed. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, ISBN 1578064805, p. x.
Source: The Feminine Mystique

“Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.”

As quoted by The Christian Science Monitor (1 April 1974) This has sometimes appeared paraphrased: "Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim."

Betty Friedan Quotes about women

“The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.”

Ch 13 "The Forfeited Self".
The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Betty Friedan Quotes about men

“Playboy: What's behind the current's men's movement?”

The Playboy Interview (1992)

Betty Friedan Quotes

“The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women.”

Opening lines, Ch. 1 "The Problem That Has No Name".
The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Context: The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — “Is this all?”

“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty.”

Preface.
The Fountain of Age (1993)
Context: What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.

“Do you object to the celebration of sexuality in our pictorials?”

The Playboy Interview (1992)

“Friedan: There was a masculine mystique, too.”

The Playboy Interview (1992)

“Playboy: What was it?”

The Playboy Interview (1992)

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