JOURNAL/WEEK 11/WOMEN STUDIES 1/THE SECOND WAVE OF FEMINISM/BETTY FRIEDMAN

Betty Friedan was an American Feminist Activist and writer.She was originally known as Bettye Naomi Goldstein. She was born on the 4th of February 1921 in Peoria,Illinois USA. Her mother traded in buttons and latter owned a Jewellery shop,she had quit her job as a newspaper editor when she became pregnant with Betty, her father run a family shop in which he sold miscellaneous items.She went to high School in Peoria, finished in 1938, then went on to attend
Smith College,graduating in 1942.Betty Friedan edited the campus Newspaper and was also active on the staff of her high school newspaper. She went to the University of California,Berkeley doing graduate work in Psychology.Afterwards, she went to work for the Leftist and Union Publications as a Journalist.For a period of about ten years ,she worked for two labour journals, namely ,The Federated Press and The United Electrical Workers UE News.In 1947,she married Carl Friedman,a theatre- producer.The'm'was dropped after marriage.They had three children .In 1952, Bettty continued to work after marriage as a Freelance Journalist.She and her husband divorced in 1969.Betty claimed in her memoir 'Life so Far'[2000]that Carl had beaten her during their marriage.Carl of course denied abusing
her.Discovering in 1957 that several of her college classmates were as dissatisfied with their lives as she was with her own, she began a series of studies that eventually resulted in the landmark work 'The Feminine Mystique' (1963). The book's thesis was that women were victims of a pervasive system of delusions and false values that urged them to find their fulfillment and identity primarily, through their husbands and children's achievement. An immediate and controversial best-seller, it is now regarded as one of the most influential American books of the 20th century. In 1966,Betty Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), which was dedicated to achieving equality of opportunity for women. A founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus (1971), she was a leader of the campaign for the
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The Second Stage (1981) assessed the status of the women's movement. The Fountain of Age (1993) addresses the psychology of old age, seeking to counter the notion that aging means loss and depletion.
Also her insights into what she described as the soul-draining frustrations felt by educated, stay-at-home women in the 1950s, "the problem that has no name," startled a society that expected women to be happy with marriage and children. Her memoir, Life So Far, appeared in 2000.Betty Friedan is remembered as being central to the reshaping of American attitudes toward women's lives and rights. Through decades of social activism, strategic thinking and powerful writing, Friedan is one of contemporary society's most effective leaders."The Feminine Mystique" made Ms Betty Friedan world famous. It also made her one of the chief architects of the women's liberation movement of the late 1960's and afterward, a sweeping social upheaval that harked back to the suffrage campaigns of the turn of the century and was called feminism's second wave.She died on her eighty fifth birthday in her home in Washington DC of congestive heart failure.