Those white women who were involved in community affairs sometimes led desegregation efforts in their school districts. Due to their seclusion in middle-class white suburbia, many women were relatively unaware of desegregation efforts in the South in the 1950s and early 1960s. Friedan cites fears over nuclear annihilation during the Cold War as part of the reason why men and women sought the comforts of domesticity in the suburbs. Bill, white soldiers and their wives found it easier to finance their dream homes in the suburbs, where many of them began families. With the inclusion of a guaranteed mortgage loan in the G.I. Work gave women a sense of purpose and independence, which many of them relinquished to become housewives after soldiers returned home in 1945. They were particularly active in the munitions factories that built the weapons and equipment that soldiers needed. While men were fighting during World War II, women took over many of the jobs that would have normally gone to men. She continued to write and engage in women’s issues until her death from heart failure in 2006.īetty Friedan marks the 1940s as the decade in which “the feminine mystique” entered the American consciousness. Friedan also pursued the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1971, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with the Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug and the activist, Gloria Steinem. She also helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, renamed the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) after the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. In 1963, she helped found the National Organization of Women (NOW), for which she served as its first president. Friedan used her influence to pursue the political aims she had adopted in her youth.

The publication of the book heralded the arrival of the second-wave feminist movement.

Her research on The Feminine Mystique began during the 1950s when she conducted a survey among her fellow Smith alumnae and found that many of them lived discontented lives as housewives. The couple had three children and settled in Rockland County, New York where Friedan became a homemaker and a freelance writer. While there, she worked in a series of odd jobs until meeting Carl Friedan, an aspiring theater producer and advertising executive. She spent a year at the University of California – Berkeley on a fellowship to pursue advanced work in psychology before moving to New York City in 1943. Friedan attended Smith College where she studied psychology and graduated summa cum laude in 1942. Betty Friedan was the oldest of three children born to Harry Goldstein, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who worked as a jeweler, and his wife Miriam Goldstein, a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant who worked as a journalist until Friedan was born.

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