Betty Friedan

NAME Bettye Naomi Goldstein Friedan

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Betty Friedan is most famous for her groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique (1963), which exposed the widespread dissatisfaction among American suburban housewives and challenged traditional gender roles. She is also renowned as a co-founder and the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), a prominent civil rights organization dedicated to achieving equality for women. Her work is widely credited with igniting the "second wave" of feminism in the United States.

BIRTH Betty Friedan was born on February 4, 1921, in Peoria, Illinois. She was the oldest of three children in her family.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Betty was born to Harry Goldstein, a Russian Jewish immigrant who owned a jewelry store in Peoria, and Miriam Horowitz Goldstein, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who had worked as a journalist until Betty was born. Her mother's return to work as a society page writer for a newspaper when Betty's father fell ill made a significant impression on young Betty, as her mother seemed much more fulfilled when working outside the home.

CHILDHOOD As a young girl, Betty was active in both Marxist and Jewish circles, though she sometimes felt isolated from the Jewish community. She later wrote that her "passion against injustice... originated from my feelings of the injustice of anti-Semitism". 

During her high school years at Peoria High School, she became involved with the school newspaper. When her application to write a column was turned down, she and six friends launched a literary magazine called Tide, which focused on home life rather than school activities.

EDUCATION Betty attended Smith College, a prestigious women's school, beginning in 1938. She won a scholarship prize in her first year for outstanding academic performance. 

By her senior year, she served as editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, where under her leadership the publication took on more political topics, including America's role in World War II, the threat of fascism, and the importance of unions. 

She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1942 with a major in psychology.

Following her undergraduate studies, she spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley on a fellowship for graduate work in psychology with Erik Erikson. During this time, she became more politically active and associated with Marxist circles.

CAREER RECORD After leaving Berkeley, Friedan moved to New York City where she worked as a reporter for the Federated Press for three years. 

She then became a writer for the United Electric, Radio, and Machine Workers of America's publication UE News. 

Following her marriage to Carl Friedan in 1947, she had three children while continuing to work as a freelance writer for women's magazines. I

In the late 1950s, she began research for what would become The Feminine Mystique after conducting a survey of her Smith College classmates at their 15-year reunion. The book was published in 1963 and became an instant bestseller. 

In 1966, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and was elected its first president. 

She organized the nationwide Women's Strike for Equality in 1970 and helped establish the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971. 

She also taught at various institutions including the University of Southern California, Queens College, Yale University, Columbia University, and Cornell University.

APPEARANCE In the October 5, 1975 Edition of The Michigan Daily, the 55-year-old Betty Friedan was described as having "broad, fullback shoulders and short thick hands - scruffy, with broken nails - like a scrubwoman's - which fly through the air constantly". She had a "rough, fruit-peel texture to her skin" and a "hard smile" that "braces the edges of her mouth". 

She was often characterized as not conventionally attractive, with The Michigan Daily describing her as a "homely, super-intellectual girl growing up in Peoria". (1)

In a 1982 account, she was described as having "no waist to speak of and a round, protruding belly". 

Betty Friedan in 1960

FASHION Friedan was not known for being particularly stylish or fashion-conscious. In her later life, she developed "a flair for funky, outrageous clothes," though her family noted she always loved to shop. 

During a shopping trip in Jerusalem in 1982, she was described as waiting for others to bring her dresses to try on, showing a certain passivity about fashion choices that contrasted sharply with her assertive public persona. (2)

She typically wore "little makeup except for a slash of dark lipstick" and her hair was once described as "chaotic" before being "taken in hand" to become "simply an unstylish mop with a mind of its own". (1)

CHARACTER Betty Friedan was a complex individual described as "loud and sometimes imperious, yet she could be charming, funny, gentle, kind and winsome". She exuded self-confidence while simultaneously displaying vulnerabilities "right out there for all to see". 

She could be stubborn and determined, with the ability to "fix her eyes and set her jaw in a 'take no prisoners' position," but she could also "listen to opposite views, change her mind, and soften at the distress of others". (3)

Friedan's manner was often described as tough. She was known for her assertiveness and strong opinions, though some accounts suggest she could be difficult and self-centered.

SPEAKING VOICE Betty Friedan had a distinctive raspy voice that was consistently noted in accounts of her public speaking. She was known for speaking loudly and directly, in contrast to the "whispery voice" that was fashionable for women in the 1950s and early 1960s. Friedan herself noted this contrast, saying "one of the first things I did when I was able to really speak... [was to say] you have to speak loud enough to be heard".

SENSE OF HUMOUR Though not primarily known as a humorist, Betty Friedan did possess a sense of humor that was part of her complex personality. She could be "charming" and "funny" according to those who knew her. (3)

Her humor sometimes emerged in her writing, as noted by critics who observed that humor was "central to her artistic project". In her journals, she expressed a desire to "write funny and tender women's storys [sic]" to avoid becoming "a desperate woman". 

RELATIONSHIPS Betty Friedan married Carl Friedan (originally Friedman) in June 1947. The marriage took place in New York City, where they were living at the time. She had three children with him – in 1948, 1952, and 1956. The marriage ended in divorce in 1969. 

Her relationship with Carl was complicated and contentious, with Betty claiming in her autobiography that he was physically abusive, while Carl countered that she was the violent partner. 

After her divorce, Friedan did not remarry, though she once asked friends to help her find "a nice Jewish husband" when she was in her 50s.

She maintained close relationships with her children, describing her family as "the sustained love of her life". She was "totally invested in her children and longed for grandchildren well before they came".  (3)

In Friedan's professional life, she had complex relationships with other feminist leaders, sometimes clashing with figures like Gloria Steinem.

MONEY AND FAME Friedan gained significant fame and influence after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, which was a staggering bestseller. It made her more than £100,000, a fortune at the time". She used some of the royalties from her book for travel. She was able to afford "fancy wares" and had a charge account at Henri Bendel. However, she also recognized that there was "something beyond monetary rewards" in work, emphasizing the importance of being "part of the ongoing work of society". (4)

Friedan's celebrity allowed her to co-found and lead NOW, and she became a globally recognized figure, meeting with "popes and heads of state" calling herself an "ambassador-without-portfolio for women."

Betty Friedan photographed by Lynn Gilbert, 1981 Wikipedia

FOOD AND DRINK Betty Friedan had a complicated relationship with cooking and food preparation. In a 1977 article she wrote for The New York Times titled "Cooking With Betty Friedan... Yes, Betty Friedan," she revealed that she had "virtually stopped cooking" after her divorce and her children left home. However, she expressed a renewed interest in cooking, considering "making soup from scratch" and hosting dinner parties with "bread and salad and cheese and wine". She reflected on why she had "lost touch with those particular female roots" of expressing love through food preparation.

Some critics have incorrectly blamed feminism and Friedan for the decline in home cooking, though this perspective has been challenged by food historians who point out that the shift away from home cooking began before The Feminine Mystique was published. (5)

MUSIC AND ARTS As a feminist icon, Friedan influenced and was part of the cultural shifts of the 1960s and 1970s. The Feminine Mystique analysed how popular culture, including women's magazines and advertising, shaped and reinforced gender roles. She noted how women's fiction changed around 1949 from stories of "plucky heroines to manipulative women trying to snare a man any way they could" and contrasted film stars such as Katherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo's portrayals of strong women in the 1930s with later, more domesticated female characters.

LITERATURE Betty Friedan was both a consumer and producer of literature. Her most famous work, The Feminine Mystique, published on February 19, 1963, is considered one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. She authored several other books including It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement (1976), The Second Stage (1981), The Fountain of Age (1993), and Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Family and Work (1998). 

First edition with a quote from Virgilia Peterson

Before becoming an author, Friedan was an avid reader and writer, showing interest in poetry during her college years and having many poems published in campus publications. Her analysis of literature in The Feminine Mystique demonstrated her critical engagement with texts, particularly how women were portrayed in fiction and magazines.

NATURE Friedan owned a summer home in Sag Harbor, Long Island, where she enjoyed the coastal environment.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Betty Friedan's life was primarily documented through her professional work, activism, and family relationships rather than her leisure activities. She was known to enjoy shopping, with her family noting that "she always loved to shop". 

In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan noted that women were expected to engage in activities like "hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas." She remarked that while she could "do it all," these activities did not provide a sense of identity or "leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are." She observed that for many women, "the something [they would do when children left home] has usually been bridge, bowling, or drinking." This illustrates her critique of limited roles for women, rather than her own hobbies.

SCIENCE AND MATHS In 1958, five years before "The Feminine Mystique," Friedan wrote an article titled "The Coming Ice Age" for Harper's Magazine, which discussed theories about climate change and glacial periods. She later reflected that this was her "most successful article" despite not being a science writer. The article explored the work of oceanographer Maurice Ewing and geologist-meteorologist William L. Donn, who had developed a new explanation for why the world alternates between ice ages and interglacial periods. (6)

Friedan graduated with a degree in psychology and The Feminine Mystique was influenced by human-potential psychologists like Abraham Maslow. 

ACTIVISM Betty Friedan, who in the 1960s more or less yanked America’s attention away from its martini and meatloaf long enough to notice that something was seriously amiss in the land of suburban contentment, didn’t exactly set out to lead a revolution. But with the publication of The Feminine Mystique in 1963—a book that basically told millions of housewives that their nagging sense of unhappiness wasn’t a personal failing but a systemic one—she did just that. Friedan gave voice to what she called “the problem that has no name,” a phrase so eerily accurate it seemed to reverberate through cul-de-sacs from coast to coast.

Suddenly, the ironing board was no longer just a household fixture—it was a symbol of confinement. And Friedan? She was the accidental general of what became the second wave of American feminism.

By 1966, clearly not one to rest on literary laurels, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and became its first president. The mission she crafted was ambitious: full and equal participation of women in American society. This meant a laundry list (one she didn’t intend for women to be stuck with alone) of demands: equal pay, an end to job ads sorted by gender, anti-discrimination laws with actual teeth, and childcare options that didn’t require either a second mortgage or a grandmother on standby.

But she didn’t stop there. On August 26, 1970, on the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage, she helped organize the Women’s Strike for Equality—a day when over 50,000 people took to the streets of New York City to make it crystal clear that voting rights were just the beginning.

She also tackled the ever-fraught issue of reproductive rights. In 1969, Friedan helped launch what would become NARAL Pro-Choice America, pushing for the legalization of abortion. Two years later, she teamed up with the likes of Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm to form the National Women’s Political Caucus, because if change wasn’t coming from above, they’d get women into the rooms where decisions were made.

Now, all this made Friedan a national figure—but not always a universally loved one. She was criticized by younger and more radical feminists for centering white, middle-class women and for her wary stance on lesbian activists, whom she once unfortunately dubbed the “lavender menace.” That remark stuck like gum on a shoe and haunted her for years, though she did later soften her stance.

Despite her missteps, Friedan was nothing if not persistent. She campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, fought for equal pay, and railed against sexual harassment before it had even entered the national vocabulary. Her later years were spent writing, lecturing, and generally refusing to go gentle into that good night.

In sum: Friedan didn’t invent feminism, but she did put it on the bestseller list—and then marched it into the courtroom, the workplace, and onto the evening news.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Betty Friedan’s philosophy was rooted in humanism, with a strong emphasis on individual fulfillment and equality. She believed that, like men, women required meaningful work and a sense of purpose beyond housework and motherhood in order to thrive. Her thinking drew from the ideas of human-potential psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, who spoke of the "basic human need to grow"—a concept Friedan believed applied just as much to women as to men.

Though she identified as a secular Jew and didn’t delve into religion in The Feminine Mystique, Friedan later became more interested in Zionism and in the rights of women in Israel. She acknowledged that her deep sense of outrage at injustice—especially gender-based injustice—had roots in her early awareness of anti-Semitism. "My passion against injustice," she once said, "originated from my feelings of the injustice of anti-Semitism."

At its core, Friedan’s outlook championed freedom of choice, equality of opportunity, and the right of every individual—regardless of gender—to live a fully realized life.

POLITICS Betty Friedan remained politically engaged throughout her life, beginning with her early involvement in Marxist circles during college and her work as a journalist for leftist and labor union publications. She even reported on the House Un-American Activities Committee in its heyday, sharpening her awareness of political repression and social injustice. Over time, her focus shifted toward gender equality, and she emerged as one of the leading voices of liberal feminism—the belief that change could be achieved by working within existing political and legal systems.

In 1966, Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and became its first president. She later organized the Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970 and helped launch the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. Her activism emphasized equal employment opportunities, reproductive rights, and women’s full participation in political life.

But Friedan didn’t always see eye to eye with the feminist movement she helped ignite. In her 1981 book The Second Stage, she pushed back against what she viewed as the more radical fringes of feminism, criticizing their focus on sexual politics and ideological purity. She believed that feminism’s next phase should involve reconciling equality with family life and working alongside—not against—men to achieve lasting social change. For Friedan, pragmatism, coalition-building, and political engagement were always key.

SCANDAL The most notable scandal in Betty Friedan's life involved the conflicting accounts of her marriage to Carl Friedan. In her autobiography Life So Far, she alleged that Carl was physically abusive, claiming she "never went on a television show in those days without a black eye" and that he was "desperate with rage and envy" at her success. Carl Friedan vehemently denied these allegations, calling the book "Lies So Far" and claiming that Betty was actually "the most violent person I have ever known". He alleged that she attacked him with kitchen knives and shards of broken mirrors, and that her violent temper was exacerbated by amphetamine use. These conflicting accounts created controversy when they became public. 

MILITARY RECORD Betty Friedan's life and work were shaped by the societal changes that occurred during and after World War II. She observed how women entered the workforce during the war when men were deployed, only to be pushed back into domestic roles when the war ended. This transition and its impact on women's lives became a central theme in her work, particularly in The Feminine Mystique.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS The Feminine Mystique touched upon "menstrual difficulties, sexual frigidity, promiscuity, pregnancy fears, childbirth depression, the high incidence of emotional breakdown and suicide among women in their twenties and thirties, the menopause crisis" as problems faced by women

In her later years, Friedan experienced health challenges, including heart problems. She underwent heart surgery at some point before 1993. Her final illness was congestive heart failure, which led to her death in 2006. (7)

HOMES Betty Friedan grew up in Peoria, Illinois, before attending Smith College in Massachusetts. After her marriage to Carl Friedan in 1947, the couple initially lived in Queens, New York, before moving to suburban Rockland County in 1956. 

In the early 1960s, she lived in Parkway Village, a planned garden apartment complex in Queens that was designed as an international and interracial community. This community, which housed United Nations employees and was notable for its racial integration, served as an "incubator and muse" for Friedan's developing ideas about family and gender roles. (8)

Later in life, she owned a "cozy, cluttered, clapboard house" in Sag Harbor, Long Island, where she spent summers beginning in 1970. She also maintained a residence in Washington, D.C., where she died in 2006. (7)

Friedan in 1987

TRAVEL Betty Friedan traveled extensively throughout her career, both within the United States and internationally. In 1966, she made a significant trip to India where she met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This journey "shaped Friedan's outlook toward female leadership and power" and influenced her subsequent work in establishing the National Organization for Women.  (9)

She served as a delegate to the United Nations' Decade for Women conferences in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), and Nairobi (1985), demonstrating her global engagement with women's issues. 

She also traveled to Jerusalem for an international conference in 1982, where she was accompanied by her cousin. 

These international experiences informed her understanding of women's issues in a global context and expanded her influence beyond American borders.

DEATH Betty Friedan died of congestive heart failure on February 4, 2006, which was her 85th birthday. She passed away at her home in Washington, D.C.

Friedan's funeral was held at Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan, New York City. The service was attended by more than 300 mourners, including her three children, their families, and numerous colleagues from the women's movement. Eulogies were delivered by family members and fellow activists, highlighting her role as a feminist pioneer, loving mother, and grandmother.

Six of Friedan's nine grandchildren accompanied her plain wooden coffin out of the chapel after the service.

After the funeral, Betty Friedan was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York. This cemetery is known as the Sag Harbor Jewish Cemetery and is located in Suffolk County, New York

 Her passing was widely reported and mourned as the loss of a pioneering figure in the feminist movement.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Betty Friedan made numerous media appearances throughout her career. She was featured on television shows, often discussing women's rights and her books.

In the entertainment industry, she appeared as herself in the documentary Year of the Woman (1973) and provided a voice for the animated series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1995). 

Her ideas and persona have been portrayed in various media, including the 2020 television series Mrs. America, where she was played by Tracy Ullman. In this portrayal, she was depicted as "a sharp-tongued activist" who sometimes clashed with other feminist leaders. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Authored The Feminine Mystique (1963): A seminal work that sparked the second-wave feminist movement.

Co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) (1966): Served as its first president, advocating for women's rights in various spheres.

Organized the Women's Strike for Equality (1970): A massive demonstration that raised awareness for women's issues.

Key leader in the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA): Advocated for constitutional equality for women.

Founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus (1971): Aimed to increase women's political representation.

Authored other influential books: Including It Changed My Life, The Second Stage, and The Fountain of Age.

Challenged traditional gender roles: Her work fundamentally shifted societal perceptions of women's roles and potential.

Source (1)  The Michigan Daily (2) Slate (3) My Jewish Learning (4) Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (5) New York Times (6) Scientific American (7) Los Angeles Times (8) The Awl (9) Lux magazine