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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

If women’s role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.
BETTY FRIEDAN

End Home Leaving Limitation Mom Responsibility Role Wife
I 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 FRIEDAN

Ability Aware Crime Discrimination Early Energy Episode Life Major Mom Myself Point Sexual Shame
life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. That is the reason for the religious revival and the new resonance of ‘family.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Beyond Life Live Men Purpose Satisfaction True Women
The feminists had destroyed the old image of woman, but they could not erase the hostility, the prejudice, the discrimination that still remained.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Destroy Discrimination Feminist Image Old Prejudice Woman
Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Adventure Age Expectation Inspirational Joy Regard Sorrow Yourself
I just decided that I didn’t want to be in the academic world, because it was [really] too easy for me at the top. But also it wasn’t active enough for me.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Academic Active Decision Easy Education Enough Myself Top World
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women’s intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?
BETTY FRIEDAN

Contribute Freedom Intelligence Love Nourish Women
Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Enemy Fellow Men Victim Women
I understood somehow my mother’s frustration. And that it was no good not only for her, but for her children or her husband, that she didn’t have a real use of her ability.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Ability Children Frustration Goodness Husband Mom Understand
Aging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Lost Opportunity Stage Strength Youth
You have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Acceptance Need Old Way Yourself
The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Fact Growth Mental Health Name Problem Simplicity Women
Dominance is a burden. Most men who are honest will admit that.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Admit Burden Dominance Honesty Men
Aging will create the music of the coming century.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Age Century Creation Music One Liner
…women who ‘adjust’ as housewives, who grow up wanting to be ‘just a housewife,’ are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps…they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.
BETTY FRIEDAN

Adjust Ambition Death Growth Slow Suffering Wife Women
While 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

Academic Brilliant College Graduation Love Myself Newspaper Quite

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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