If you were very bright and you became head of a department, as I did, of the psychology department, you were encouraged to go on to graduate work. But as a women you didn’t even think about discrimination.
BETTY FRIEDANA woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man’s advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.
More Betty Friedan Quotes
-
-
Men weren’t really the enemy – they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
I’m my age and I feel glorious.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
A good woman is one who loves passionately, has guts, seriousness and passionate convictions, takes responsibility, and shapes society.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Some 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 FRIEDAN -
Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex, but neither should she “adjust” to prejudice and discrimination.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
I 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 FRIEDAN -
A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, ‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?’ She mustn’t feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
American women were frustrated in just the role of housewife – but they also managed to enlarge it. And they weren’t just housewives, they were community leaders.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Aging will create the music of the coming century.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.
BETTY FRIEDAN -
We need to see men and women as equal partners, but its hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
BETTY FRIEDAN