FRIEDAN, BETTY NAOMI GOLDSTEIN
In 1963, author Betty Naomi Goldstein Friedan’s first book, The Feminine Mystique, launched the
feminist movement, which eventually expanded the lifestyle choices for U.S. women. By the
1990s, she had also become a spokesperson for older and economically disadvantaged people
and was recognized and honored by women outside the United States for her global leadership and influence on women’s issues.
She was born Elizabeth Naomi Goldstein on
February 4, 1921, in Peoria, Illinois. Her father,
Harry Goldstein, was a successful storeowner
who emigrated from Russia. Her mother,
Miriam Horowitz Goldstein, graduated from
Bradley Polytechnic Institute and wrote society
news as a Peoria newspaper journalist. Friedan
entered Smith College in 1939, majored in psy-
chology, and served as editor of the college
newspaper. After graduating summa cum laude
in 1942, she interviewed for the only type of job
available to women journalists at the time:
researcher for a major U.S. news magazine. But
the position of researcher amounted to doing all
the work while someone else received the byline,
and Friedan was not interested in that. Instead,
she wrote for a Greenwich Village news agency,
covering the labor movement.
When WORLD WAR II ended, Friedan lost her
job to a returning veteran. (Returning veterans
were guaranteed their prewar jobs.) Friedan then
thought of going to medical school, a choice very
few women could pursue. But instead, she fol-
lowed the traditional path, marrying returning
veteran Carl Friedan in 1947 and starting a fam-
ily. After her first child was born, she worked for
another newspaper, but was fired when she
became pregnant with her second child. She
protested to the newspaper guild, as no one had
ever questioned her ability to perform her job,
but was told that losing her job was “her fault”
because she was pregnant. At that time, the term
sex discrimination did not exist.
While she was a mother and housewife living
in suburban New York, Friedan wrote articles for
women’s magazines such as McCall’s and Ladies’
Home Journal on a freelance basis. Tapped by
McCall’s to report on the state of the alumnae of
the Smith class of 1942 as they returned for their
fifteenth reunion in 1957, Friedan visited the
campus and was struck by the students’ lack of
interest in careers after graduation. This disin-
terest in intellectual pursuits contrasted greatly
with Friedan’s perception of her Smith class-
mates of the 1930s and 1940s.
Extensive research over the next several years
brought Friedan to the conclusion that women’s
magazines were at fault because they defined
women solely in relationship to their husbands
and children. This had not always been the case;
the magazines had evolved in the postwar years
from promoters of women’s independence into
paeans to consumerism, bent on keeping U.S.
housewives in the home by selling them more
and more household products.
Not surprisingly, Friedan was unable to get
her work on this issue published in an acceptable
format by the women’s magazines she was
criticizing. Her report was published in book
form in 1963 as The Feminine Mystique, in
which she chronicled the dissatisfaction of suburban
housewives, dubbing it “the problem with
no name.” The book struck a common chord
among U.S. women, who recognized themselves
in the women she described in its pages. For the
first time since the women’s suffrage movement
ended successfully with the passage of the NINETEENTH
AMENDMENT granting women the right
to vote, women gathered together on a large
scale to work for equal rights with men, a concept
that at the time was nothing less than revolutionary.
In 1966, with Kathryn Clarenbach, Friedan
cofounded the NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR
WOMEN (NOW). NOW’s original statement of
purpose was written by Friedan: “Women want
feminism to take the actions needed to bring
women into the mainstream of American society,
now; full equality for women, in fully equal
partnership with men.” Friedan served as
NOW’s president until 1970. Under her leadership,
NOW propelled the women’s movement
from middle-class suburbia to nationwide
activism. Friedan also helped organize the
National Abortion Rights Action League (now
NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA) in 1969, and the
National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. All
three organizations were still active participants
in U.S. politics and culture into the 2000s.
On August 26, 1970, the fiftieth anniversary
of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment,
the Women’s Strike for Equality took
place. Friedan’s brainchild, this WOMEN’S
RIGHTS demonstration was the largest that had
ever occurred in the United States. Thousands of
U.S. women marched in the streets for a day
rather than working as housewives, secretaries,
and waitresses, to show how poorly society
would fare without women’s labor and to
demand three things for women: equal opportunity
in employment and education, 24-hour
CHILD CARE centers, and legalized abortion.
Although the media at the time portrayed the
strike as frivolous or a result of female hysteria,
their compulsion to pay the event any attention
at all was a step forward for the women’s movement.
By the 1980s, it was apparent that Friedan’s
feminism differed from that of other U.S.
feminists such as GLORIA STEINEM and KATE MILLETT.When other feminist leaders were saying
women could “have it all,” meaning a successful
career, fulfilling marriage, and happy
children, Friedan, who had been divorced from
her husband since 1969, wrote articles such as
“Being ‘Superwoman’ Is Not the Way to Go”
(Woman’s Day, Oct. 1981) and “Feminism’s Next
Step” (New York Times Magazine, July 1981).
Rather than focusing on sexual violence and
abortion rights, Friedan’s writings emphasized
the necessity of working with other groups to
improve the plight of children, members of
minorities, and economically disadvantaged
people.
In her 1981 book The Second Stage, Friedan
called for an open discussion of traditional feminism’s
denial of the importance of family and
of women’s needs to nurture and be nurtured.
She predicted that the women’s movement
would die out if feminists did not take the issues
of children and men more seriously. It was not
surprising that this position was roundly criticized
as antifeminist by many of Friedan’s contemporaries.
Another position that was at odds with
NOW surfaced in 1986 when she declared her
support for a California law requiring employers
to grant up to four months of unpaid leave for
women who were disabled by pregnancy or
childbirth. The 1980 law (West’s Ann. Cal. Gov.
Code § 12945) was the subject of a U.S. Supreme
Court case, California Federal Savings and Loan
Ass’n v. Guerra, 479 U.S. 272, 107 S. Ct. 683, 93
L. Ed. 2d 613 (1987). NOW opposed the law as a
dangerous singling out of women for special
treatment; Friedan called it outrageous that
feminists would side with employers who were
trying to evade offering women important and
needed benefits. These opinions, among other
things, caused Friedan to lose support within
the women’s movement as well as an audience in
the media.
Another reason for Friedan’s fall from media
attention was her style, which, like her philosophy,
also differed from that of other feminist
spokespersons, most notably Steinem. Whereas
Steinem was a favorite of the media and actively
courted their attention, Friedan did not seek out
media attention and often railed against what
she saw as the stereotyping of women. Her
stormy relationship with the media contributed
to an image of her as old, unattractive, and out
of touch with modern feminism.
By 1990, although Friedan was moving away
from what was considered mainstream feminism,
she had earned a permanent place in history.
That year, Life magazine named her one of
the one hundred most important people of the
twentieth century.
In September 1995, a new generation of
journalists seemed surprised at Friedan’s extensive
international influence, which was demonstrated
at the Non-Governmental Organization
Forum on Women, an unofficial gathering at the
U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women.
Friedan attended the forum as one of only a few
women who had participated in all four U.N.
women’s conferences since the first one was held
in Mexico City in 1975.Women of all nationalities
and ages sought her out, listened to her
speeches, and attended her workshops.
Friedan’s focus was to move the women’s
movement away from conflict with men and
toward economic policies that benefited both
sexes, such as shorter workweeks and higher
minimum wages.As she saw it, policies that were
pro-women alone were portrayed in the media
and by opponents as anti-family and anti-men.
Poor economic conditions and shrinking job
opportunities often resulted in the treatment of
women’s developing economic power as a scapegoat
for difficulties suffered by men or families.
In Friedan’s opinion, this unnecessary tension
between men and women diverted attention
from the issues that really threatened the wellbeing
of women and families: poverty, unemployment,
lack of education and HEALTH CARE,
and crime. To combat these problems, she supported
a proposal put forth by distinguished
academics and public policy researchers that
would provide low-income parents, not just
women on WELFARE, with HEALTH INSURANCE
and child care.
Friedan’s focus on more gender-neutral
policies was an outgrowth of her research into
gerontology and the issues facing aging people.
The 1993 publication of The Fountain of Age had
put Friedan back in the media spotlight as the
spokesperson of her generation, an advocate for
freeing older people from damaging stereotypes,
just as she had previously done for women.
Friedan brought to her advocacy for older people
her philosophy of cooperation, developed
during her decades of work in the women’s
movement. A delegate to the Fourth White
House Conference on Aging in 1995, she fought against the polarization of young and older U.S.
citizens that some politicians encouraged in
order to increase their political power. She
eschewed the idea of forced retirement, instead
arguing for older workers to voluntarily and
gradually cut down their work schedules and to
explore job sharing and consultant work. At the
same time, Friedan vowed to save programs such
as SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, and MEDICAID,
which were under attack by fiscal conservatives.
With that full plate of issues, it was clear that she
was not ready to stop her advocacy work.
In the late 1990s, Friedan continued to speak
at schools and other forums around the country
and throughout the world. She wrote for a number
of publications and taught at several schools,
including the University of California, New York
University, and Mount Vernon College in Washington,
D.C, where she was the Distinguished Professor
of Social Evolution. She has also served as
an adjunct scholar at the Smithsonian Institution’s
Wilson International Center for Scholars. In 2000,
she published her autobiography, Life So Far.
FURTHER READINGS
Evans, Sara. 1980. Personal Politics: The Roots ofWomen’s Liberation
in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left.
New York: Random House.
Horowtiz, Daniel. 2000. Betty Friedan and the Making of
“The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold
War, and Modern Feminism. Boston: Univ. of Massachusetts
Press.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Age Discrimination; Ireland, Patricia; Sex Discrimination.
