F eminist and g ender t heories

Betty Friedan (1921–2006): The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan was born Betty Naomi Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois, in 1921. She graduated 
from Smith College in 1942 with a B.A. in psychology. In 1958, she surveyed her Smith 
classmates and found that a great many of them were, like her, deeply dissatisfied with 
their lives. She turned her findings into a book, The Feminine Mystique (1963), which 
became an immediate and controversial best seller. It sold more than three million copies, 
was translated into a number of languages, and ushered in a new era of consciousness-
raising. Friedan’s central thesis was that women suffered under a pervasive system of 
delusions and false values under which they were urged to find personal fulfillment, even 
identity, vicariously through the husbands and children to whom they were expected 
cheerfully to devote their lives. This restricted role of wife–mother, whose spurious glo-
rification by advertisers and others was suggested by the title of the book, led almost 
inevitably to a sense of unreality or general spiritual malaise in the absence of genuine, 
creative, self-defining work. In effect, then, Friedan extended de Beauvoir’s writing in a 
more popular form. In 1966, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women, 
a civil rights group dedicated to achieving equality of opportunity for women. It became 
the largest and probably the most effective organization in the women’s movement. 
Friedan also helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in 
1969, and the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. Friedan’s other major works 
include It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (1963); The Second 
Stage (1981); and The Fountain of Age (1993), which focuses on the psychology of old 
age and urges a revision of society’s view that aging means loss and depletion. Betty 
Friedan died on February 5, 2006, in Washington, DC.