Betty Friedan Quotes

A collection of quotes by Betty Friedan.

Betty Friedan (1921-2006) was an American writer, activist, and feminist who played a pivotal role in the second wave feminist movement in the United States. Born Bettye Naomi Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois, she grew up in a predominantly Jewish community and developed an early passion for social justice.

Friedan graduated from Smith College in 1942 and went on to pursue a career in journalism. She worked as a reporter for various publications, including leftist and labor union newspapers. However, it was her groundbreaking book, "The Feminine Mystique," published in 1963, that catapulted her into national prominence. The book, based on interviews with college-educated suburban housewives, criticized the notion that fulfillment for women could only be obtained through marriage and motherhood. It helped spark a national conversation about the role of women in society and was instrumental in igniting the feminist movement.

In 1966, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), an influential advocacy group dedicated to securing women's rights, gender equality, and reproductive freedom. As NOW's first president, she spearheaded campaigns for equal pay, maternity leave, and the inclusion of women in educational and professional domains.

Throughout her life, Betty Friedan continued to be an influential figure in promoting gender equality. She wrote numerous books on feminism, tackled issues such as ageism and sexuality, and inspired generations of women to challenge societal norms and fight for their rights. Her legacy as a leading feminist remains significant today.

Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the

Each suburban wife struggles 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?

Feminism Marriage Parenting Inspirational Purpose Existentialism Housekeeping

If women's role in life is limited solely to housewife/mothe

If women's role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.

Life Home Women Theend

Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and s

Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Age

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of A

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

Women

It is easier to live through someone else than to become com

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

Relationships

It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society,

It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.

Competition

Strange new problems are being reported in the growing gener

Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework --an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life.

Children

A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, ei

A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.

Sex

The suburban housewife -- she was the dream image of the you

The suburban housewife -- she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife -- freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother had found true feminine fulfillment.

Housework

Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim.

Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim.

Men

The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds

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?

Satisfaction

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.

Sex