We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’
BETTY FRIEDANWe can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.’
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 FRIEDANWhen one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women’s passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
BETTY FRIEDANI realized that what I was saying was threatening, somehow, to the editors of women’s magazines. That it threatened the very world they were trying to paint, what I then called the “feminine mystique.”
BETTY FRIEDANI love newspapers. I’ve worked on newspapers, all my life. I’ve always loved it.
BETTY FRIEDANYou have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.
BETTY FRIEDANI knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.
BETTY FRIEDANToday the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.
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 FRIEDANI can’t point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother’s ability and energy.
BETTY FRIEDANIf 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 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 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 FRIEDANAging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
BETTY FRIEDANNo woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
BETTY FRIEDANWhile I had been, I guess, quite brilliant, academically, in my college years, I also had been editor of the paper, and I loved that. And, that was a much more active thing. And I missed it when I was doing graduate work.
BETTY FRIEDAN