A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she “adjust” to prejudice and discrimination.
BETTY FRIEDANA girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she “adjust” to prejudice and discrimination.
BETTY FRIEDANSome people think I’m saying, ‘Women of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your men. It’s not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners.
BETTY FRIEDANInstead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.
BETTY FRIEDANMost of the people in the workforce today will spend some years when they also have children and family responsibilities.
BETTY FRIEDANThe only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.
BETTY FRIEDANA good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
BETTY FRIEDANWomen, because they are not generally the principal breadwinners, can be perhaps most useful as the trail blazers, working along the bypaths, doing the unusual job that men cannot afford to gamble on.
BETTY FRIEDANJust as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.
BETTY FRIEDANI love newspapers. I’ve worked on newspapers, all my life. I’ve always loved it.
BETTY FRIEDANBy now, abortion should be obsolete. And I – and probably a lot of other feminists – wish it were obsolete, because abortion, in itself, is not a value – it is simply the right to chose, which is an essential value.
BETTY FRIEDANI have discovered that there is a crucial difference between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be.
BETTY FRIEDANMen are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.
BETTY FRIEDANI won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn’t want to be an academic.
BETTY FRIEDANThe situation of women and men is not comparable to worker-boss or black and white.
BETTY FRIEDANAdvice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
BETTY FRIEDANEach woman is made to feel it is her own cross to bear if she can’t be the perfect clone of the male superman and the perfect clone of the feminine mystique.
BETTY FRIEDAN