Posted on 02/04/2006 1:10:18 PM PST by GeneD
WASHINGTON - Betty Friedan, whose manifesto "The Feminine Mystique" became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday, her birthday. She was 85.
Friedan died at her home of congestive heart failure, according to a cousin, Emily Bazelon.
Friedan's assertion in her 1963 best seller that having a husband and babies was not everything and that women should aspire to separate identities as individuals, was highly unusual, if not revolutionary, just after the baby and suburban booms of the Eisenhower era.
The feminine mystique, she said, was a phony bill of goods society sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name" and seeking a solution in tranquilizers and psychoanalysis.
"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, `Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children," Friedan said.
In the racial, political and sexual conflicts of the 1960s and '70s, Friedan's was one of the most commanding voices and recognizable presences in the women's movement.
As a founder and first president of the National Organization for Women in 1966, she staked out positions that seemed extreme at the time on such issues as abortion, sex-neutral help-wanted ads, equal pay, promotion opportunities and maternity leave.
Funny.
With telecommuting and all, many can now to stay "barefoot and in the kitchen".
If they want to.
But much of the damage which was done lingers on and in many cases gets increasingly worse.
That's true. In the future many, many more people including MOMS will be able to work at thome. This is a very GOOD thing.
Exactly right. Meantime, some of us homemakers were forced underground. I'll never forget the feeling, being at cocktail parties with my sales-rep husband, and women there asking me what I did. And, evidently, the hideous homemaker hump would suddenly arise on my back. That must have been why they were looking at me with horror and pity. The years of the giddy attempting to shame those who decided to KEEP their family their first priority. It wasn't an easy choice to defend, in those days. You were simply cut off and dismissed before an explanation could be offered. Men have never treated women as badly as feminists treated non-feminists then. That is why I heralded Martha Stewart. She made it officially O.K. to love homemaking as a CHOICE.
Only one chance in 365 or perhaps 366. Thats 0.2738%
They look much alike. I thought the same thing! LOL!
Oh my, I never realized how much she looks like helen thomas!
Well, only women who work outside the home truly work. /sarcasm
"Men have never treated women as badly as feminists treated non-feminists then."
I had a few run ins with feminists in academia and in the corporate world (what loittle time I spent there), and am glad I spent little time around them. But I must disagree. My experience is vastly different. Some men I have encountered are every bit as bad as the feminists, if not worse.
She made the devil wait a long time before he could collect her.
Happy birthday Betty.
Actually, Steinem was the real firebrand. I can still hear her yelling, "No more alimony! Let's hear it again! No more alimony!"
Evil has lost an ally...
I tried to watch that show once, but his accent ruined it.
Boy is it fun talking about people being in Hell.
Will Greer.
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