Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Civil Rights Movement

Betty Friedan

by Terry D. Billhartz

One of the world’s leading advocates for women’s rights. Her 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, reignited the women’s movement in the United States.

Early Life

Betty Naomi Goldstein was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Peoria, Illinois. A sickly child, she became a highly gifted young woman. Graduating first in her high school class, she then traveled east to Smith College to major in psychology. During her college years, she distinguished herself as a journalist by serving as editor of the school paper. After graduating summa cum laude, she spent a year as a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, then secured work as a reporter in New York. At age twenty-six, she married Carl Friedan and, a year later, had her first child. After giving birth, Friedan briefly returned to work but was fired when she again became pregnant. During the early 1950s, Friedan was a suburban housewife and mother. Magazines of the era assured women that housework brought great fulfillment. Friedan, however, never experienced this promised satisfaction.

The 1960s

In 1957, Friedan began research on The Feminine Mystique, the book that would help reignite the women’s movement in the 1960s. Friedan sent questionnaires to members of her 1942 graduating class at Smith (an all-women’s college), asking her former classmates to describe their lives since college. Their responses echoed her own experiences. American women were not as content as the popular literature alleged.

In 1963, Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, a passionate volume that articulated the frustrations of women trapped in the domestic sphere. To Friedan, women were dissatisfied because marriage and homemaking were not sufficient outlets for many of them, and she famously described their plight as “the problem that has no name.” Her message that women should not feel guilty about seeking self-actualization and pursuits outside the home struck a popular chord and helped spur a new spirit of feminism.

Friedan quickly emerged as one of the leading spokespeople of the new feminist movement. In 1966, she co-founded and served as first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), an organization devoted to the achievement of full equality between the sexes. In 1969, Friedan helped establish the National Abortion Rights League and came up with the idea of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the women suffrage amendment with a nation-wide event, Women’s Strike for Equality. This August 26, 1970 event received unprecedented media coverage and significantly enlarged the base of the women’s movement.

Betty Friedan. (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress’ Prints & Photographs division)

CivRight2e_p0276_1.jpg

Later Life

In 1971, Friedan helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), a multipartisan feminist group dedicated to increasing the number of women in elected and appointed government offices. In 1973, she founded the pro-choice advocacy group, National Association for the Repeal of Abortion laws, now known as the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) Pro-Choice America. Later in the 1970s, Friedan became critical of NOW and NWPC for focusing on lesbian and minority rights issues, a focus which she felt was driving many mainstream women out of the movement. In 1981, she published the book The Second Stage, which looked ahead to the next stage of the women’s movement, and later wrote three more volumes, including 1993’s The Fountain of Age. She died of congestive heart failure on February 4, 2006.

Impact

By articulating sentiments felt by millions of women but expressed publicly by none, Friedan provided the catalyst that launched the modern women’s movement. Through her insightful writings and social activism, Friedan played a major role in reshaping American attitudes about the role of women in society.

Further Reading

1 

The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 2013) is available in a fiftieth anniversary edition with a new introduction by Gail Collins and an afterward by Anna Quindlen. Friedan’s other notable books include The Second Stage (originally published 1981; reissued with a new introduction by Harvard University Press, 1998) and The Fountain of Age (New York: Touchstone, 1993), in which she reimagines aging as an experience rife with new opportunities. Judith Tennessee’s Betty Friedan: Her Life (New York: Random House, 1999) is a comprehensive, somewhat critical biography of Friedan, while Susan Oliver’s more recent Betty Friedan: The Personal is Political (London: Pearson, 2007) is slim but informative. In Daniel Horowitz’s Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), the author considers Friedan’s classic book in light of her earlier dabbling in radical politics.

See Also: National Organization for Women (NOW); Women’s Rights.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Billhartz, Terry D. "Betty Friedan." Civil Rights Movement, edited by Michael J. O’Neal, Salem Press, 2020. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CivRight2e_0146.
APA 7th
Billhartz, T. D. (2020). Betty Friedan. In M. J. O’Neal (Ed.), Civil Rights Movement. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Billhartz, Terry D. "Betty Friedan." Edited by Michael J. O’Neal. Civil Rights Movement. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2020. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.