Betty Friedan Quotes - Page 2

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• It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.

  Betty Friedan

  Voice, Answers, Realizing

  BETTY FRIEDAN (1963). “The Feminine Mystique”

  24 Copy quote

• Economic equity is an enormous empowerment of women. Having jobs that provide income means that women can be a more effective force, a more equal force, in the political process. Women with income take themselves more seriously and they are taken more seriously.

  Betty Friedan

  Jobs, Taken, Mean

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Feminist, Prejudice, Discrimination

  Betty Friedan (2006). “Life So Far: A Memoir”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

  27 Copy quote

• Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.

  Betty Friedan

  Light, Darkness, Age

  Betty Friedan (2006). “Fountain of Age”, p.104, Simon and Schuster

  29 Copy quote

• Protectiveness has often muffled the sound of doors closing against women.

  Betty Friedan

  Doors, Justice, Diversity

  BETTY FRIEDAN (1963). “The Feminine Mystique”

  13 Copy quote

• It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

  Betty Friedan

  Women, Live Life, Lost Youth

  "The Feminine Mystique".

  11 Copy quote

• Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.

  Betty Friedan

  Mother, Dream, Children

  28 Copy quote

• Advice? I don't offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.

  Betty Friedan

  Advice, Life Is, Offers

  7 Copy quote

• The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - "Is this all?"

  Betty Friedan

  Years, Wife, House

  "The Feminine Mystique". Book by Betty Friedan. Chapter 1: "The Problem That Has No Name", opening lines, 1963.

  35 Copy quote

• Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute.

  Betty Friedan

  Children, Powerful, Men

  35 Copy quote

• The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and can continue to save, American women from the greater dangers of the feminine mystique.

  Betty Friedan

  Thinking, Keys, Unnecessary

  betty friedan (1963). “the year's most controversial bestseller the feminine mystique”

  17 Copy quote

• I never set out to write a book to change women's lives, to change history. It's like, 'Who, me?' Yes, me. I did it. And I'm not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.

  Betty Friedan

  Book, Writing, Different

  21 Copy quote

• Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.

  Betty Friedan

  Children, Home, Names

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Women, Diversity, Enemy

  "The Christian Science Monitor", April 1, 1974.

  18 Copy quote

• When 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 Friedan

  Thinking, America, Target

  BETTY FRIEDAN (1963). “The Feminine Mystique”

  10 Copy quote

• Each 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

  Perfect, Males, Bears

  9 Copy quote

• I 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 Friedan

  Differences, People, Age

  Betty Friedan (2006). “Fountain of Age”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is the kind that was forbidden by the feminine mystique, the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession. If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don't blame the women's movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.

  Betty Friedan

  Art, Sex, Commitment

  12 Copy quote

• Aging will create the music of the coming century.

  Betty Friedan

  Aging, Century

  9 Copy quote

• There's no question that the black middle class has benefited greatly by the civil rights movement. But there is a large black underclass that does not have access to jobs. If there's no clear road to income and status except crime, we should expect social problems. You can't solve this problem without addressing the economic issues, and the same is true with gender.

  Betty Friedan

  Jobs, Class, Issues

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Betty Friedan

  Mother, Children, Home

  Source: www.pbs.org

  13 Copy quote

• Diversity has got to be a part of modern feminism, and I think that my feminism is stronger because its an inclusive thing. I won't be backed into a corner that polarizes me against other women. And I wished they wouldn't be either.

  Betty Friedan

  Thinking, Diversity, Feminism

  "LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Betty Friedan : Beyond the 'Feminine Mystique:' A New Era of Women's Rights". Interview with Robert Scheer, articles.latimes.com. April 26, 1992.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Children, Home

  Betty Friedan (2006). “Fountain of Age”, p.136, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• To protest free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong.

  Betty Friedan

  Names, Speech, Dangerous

  4 Copy quote

• Dominance is a burden. Most men who are honest will admit that.

  Betty Friedan

  Men, Dominance, Honest

  Interview with David Sheff, "Playboy", September 1992.

  6 Copy quote

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