WESTSIDER BETTY FRIEDAN
Founder of the women's liberation movement
7-14-79
One of the most-discussed nonfiction works published in 1978 was The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History by astrophysicist Michael H. Hart. He writes: "My criterion was neither fame nor talent nor nobility of character, but actual personal influence on the course of human history and on the everyday lives of individuals." Seven native-born Americans were included in the 100, and when People magazine requested Hart to expand his list of Americans to 25, the first name he added was that of Betty Friedan, who, he said, "through women's liberation, has already had a greater impact than most presidents."
The book that did most to trigger the women's movement was Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), a brilliant analysis of the postwar "back to the home" movement, when women were led to believe that they could find fulfillment only through childbearing and housework. That myth, said Friedan, resulted in a sense of emptiness and loss of identity for millions of American women. Her book became an international best-seller, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
But The Feminine Mystique was only the first of many contributions that Friedan has made to the women's movement. In 1966 she founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), which today has more than 70,000 members and is by far the most effective feminist group in the world. She has written a second book, It Changed My Life, made countless appearances on radio and television, and become one of the most sought-after lecturers in the country. Despite her public image as a hard core activist, Betty Friedan at 58 is a charming, decidedly feminine woman who enjoys wearing makeup and colorful dresses. In an interview at her brightly decorated apartment high above Lincoln Center, she reveals that these two aspects of her personality are not at all contradictory.
"The women's movement had to come. It was an evolutionary thing," she says, in robust, throaty, rapid-fire bursts of speech interspersed with long pauses. "If I had not articulated these ideas in 1963, by '66 somebody else would have. I think that it's good that I did, because what I had to say somehow got to the essence of it, which is the personhood of woman, and not what later obscured it, with a woman-against-man kind of thing."
It was largely through the lobbying efforts of NOW that the U.S. Senate last October approved a three-year extension of the deadline for ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). So far, 35 of the required 38 states have voted for the amendment. The new deadline is June 30, 1982.
"There's no question that three more states will pass it by that time," says Friedan. "But it's not going to be easy, because there are these well financed right-wing campaigns trying to block it. They understand that the ERA is not only the symbol but the substance of what women have won — that it will give them constitutional underpinning forevermore, so that they can't push women back to the second-class status of the cheap labor pool.
"The ERA will not do anything dramatic — like change the bathrooms — but it will ensure, for example, that women have their own right for social security, which they don't have now. You have to realize that the reactionary forces in this country are using the sexual issue as a kind of smoke screen, to create a hate movement. They're the same forces that tried to prevent labor from organizing, that burnt crosses on lawns in the South, that painted swastikas on synagogues. … NOW has made it the priority, because if the ERA is blocked, it will be the signal to take back everything."
A woman who smiles and laughs easily in spite of her intensity, Friedan prefers to be called not Miss, Ms., or Mrs., but simply Betty. Born in Peoria, Illinois, she majored in psychology at Smith College and graduated summa cum laude. In June, 1947, after moving to New York City, she married Carl Friedan, then a theatrical producer. Three children later, the Friedans moved to the suburbs, and it was there that she formulated the ideas for The Feminine Mystique.
Divorced since 1969, Friedan maintains a very close relationship with her children, who are at Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley graduate school, and Harvard Medical School. A Westsider since 1964, she runs in Central Park for an hour each day.
Of the half dozen major projects she's involved in at the moment, the most significant is her new book, The Fountain of Age. "It's about the last third of life," she explains. "I call it the new third of life, because many women have only begun to discover that it exists."
Asked about her chief pleasures in life, she replies with obvious satisfaction, "I like parties, I like my friends, I like talking, I like dancing. … One thing I've discovered is that the stronger you get, the more you can be soft and gentle and tender, and also have fun. I demand my right to be funny and to have fun, and not just to always be deadly serious."