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.
There is absolutely no evidence that it is harmful to children if their mother’s health, well-being and autonomy and control of her own destiny is maximized by work outside the home.
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?
A 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.
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.
I 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.”
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 Quote - [Feminist:] One who believes in the liberation of that which has been suppressed as female in a man.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/feminist-one-who-believes-in-the-liberation-of-tha-683x1024.jpg)
![Betty Friedan Quote - 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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/i-just-decided-that-i-didnt-want-to-be-in-the-acad-683x1024.jpg)
