North East Digital Village
VILLAGE >IN MEMORY OF
In Memory of Betty Friedan
Born: February 4, 1921
Deceased: February 4, 2006 at age 85
"American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if . . . the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and to realize one's full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror." cite: The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan died on February 4, 2006 of congestive heart failure on her 85th birthday at home in Washington, DC.
Betty Friedan was one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and a leader in the women's movement. In June, 1966, Betty Friedan and 27 other women and men founded NOW. Ms. Friedan was NOW's president from 1966 to 1970. She was a convener of the National Women's Political Caucus and a key leader in the struggle for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Ms. Friedan was also the co-chair of Women, Men and Media, a gender-based research organization that conducts research on gender and the media. She also was a founder in 1968 of the National Conference for Repeal of Abortion Laws, which became the National Abortion Rights Action League, and of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.
Betty Friedan was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois in 1921. She was active in marxist and radical Jewish groups, attended Smith College from which she graduated summa cum laude in 1942. In 1947 she married Carl Friedan. They had three children and were divorced in 1969.
An active Democrat, she helped persuade the Democratic Party to give women half the delegate strength at its nominating convention and was herself a delegate when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for vice president in 1984. Ms. Friedan was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. She lived in New York City and Washington, D.C., and had a summer house in Sag Harbor, New York.
News Stories and Biographical Information
"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. " cite: Christian Science Monitor 1 Apr 74
_/\_TO THE TOP
Friedan's Writings
- The Feminine Mystique (1963)
- It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement (1976)
- The Second Stage (1981)
- The Fountain of Aging in Fall (1993)
- Life So Far (2000)
Read More
- Hennessee, Judith Adler. "Betty Freidan: her life", New York: Randon House, c1999.
- Horowitz, Daniel. "Betty Friedan and the making of the feminine mystique: the American left, the cold and modern feminism". Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, c1998.
- Horowitz, Daniel. "Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America" American Quarterly, Volume 48, Number 1, March 1996, pp. 1-42
- Blau, Justine. "Betty Friedan: Feminist (Women of Achievement)", Paperback Edition, Chelsea House Publications 1990
- Bohannon, Lisa Frederikson. "Women's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan", Hardcover Edition, Morgan Reynolds Publishing 2004
- Hennessee, Judith. "Betty Friedan: Her Life", Hardcover Edition, Random House 1999
- Henry, Sondra. Taitz, Emily. "Betty Friedan: Fighter For Women's Rights", Hardcover Edition, Enslow Publishers 1990
- Meltzer, Milton. "Betty Friedan: A Voice For Women's Rights", Hardcover Edition, Viking Press 1985
- Taylor-Boyd, Susan. "Betty Friedan: Voice For Women's Rights, Advocate of Human Rights", Hardcover Edition, Gareth Stevens Publishing 1990
- Edited by: Janann Sherman. "Interviews with Betty Fridan". Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
- Edited by: Brigid O'Farrell. "Beyond Gender: the new politics of work and family". Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press: Baltimore: Distributed by Johns Hopkins University Press, c1997.
- Papers 1933-1980. Ca. 62 boxes, 77 audio recordings, 7 video, recordings, 7 phonorecords, and 44 folders. Also: Addenda 1952-1993. Radcliffe College, The Arthur & Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America Cambridge, Massachusetts.
VILLAGE >IN MEMORY OF
|