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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.
With those words in her best seller The Feminine Mystique in 1963, Betty Friedan sparked a revival of the women's rights movement that had culminated in 1920 in the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
When Friedan died Feb. 4 on her 85th birthday of congestive heart failure, activists credited her with stirring women to find fulfillment beyond husband and children by pursuing careers not limited to traditional choices of nursing, teaching and secretarial work.
"We wouldn't have had the modern feminist movement without Betty Friedan," says Clare Giesen, executive director of the National Women's Political Caucus. "Her drive, her energy, her indefatigable self propelled this second women's movement into gear."
Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women, or NOW, in 1966 and was its first president for four years.
The Feminine Mystique "opened women's eyes," NOW President Kim Gandy said in February. "Betty recognized a longing in the women of her generation for ... a chance to live their own dreams beyond the narrow definition of womanhood that had limited their lives."
NOW Vice President Latifa Lyles, 31, says Friedan's message "continues to inspire women of my generation to take action to achieve full equality."
In 1969, Friedan helped found the abortion rights organization now called NARAL Pro-Choice America.
In 1971, when she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus to support women's ambitions for public office, the Senate had one female member. The House of Representatives had 13.
The new Congress that will be sworn in next month will have 16 female senators and 71 women in the House.
Today's women in politics "may not know who Betty Friedan is, but we owe everything to her," Giesen says. "She was a force of nature and made things happen."
Friedan was born Bettye Goldstein in Peoria, Ill. She said her mother gave up a newspaper job and became a housewife when her daughter was born but felt frustrated and found gratification later when she took over the family jewelry store after her husband became ill.
At Smith College, Friedan edited the campus newspaper and graduated summa cum laude with a major in psychology in 1942. For 10 years, she wrote for labor-union newspapers in New York City.
She married theatrical producer Carl Friedan in 1947. They had three children. As a suburban wife and mother, she kept up a career of freelancing for magazines. For her college reunion in 1957, Friedan circulated a questionnaire among her classmates. She learned that many, like her, were dissatisfied with their lives.
That survey, which Friedan turned into a magazine article that was rejected by many women's publications, became the basis for The Feminine Mystique. She published five other books. She and Carl Friedan were divorced in 1969.
Friedan said that the women's movement should stay in the American mainstream and that men should be accepted as allies.
"Men weren't really the enemy," Friedan said. "They were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill."
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