Pioneering Feminist Dies at 85

Betty Friedan, who authored “The Feminine Mystique” and spearheaded the 1960s feminist movement died of congestive heart failure Saturday in Washington, D.C. It was her 85th birthday.

“She changed everything,” said Mary C. Brinton, the Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology at Harvard. “Her first book really changed the whole landscape of what it meant to be an American woman.”

“The Feminine Mystique,” which took the country by storm in 1963, discussed the personal dissatisfaction of thousands of women arising from a limited conception of feminine fulfilment. The book was one of the first articulations of what Friedan termed the “problem that has no name.” In the book, she dared women to establish individual identities, distinct from the traditional housewife role.

The book has since sold over three million copies.

“She put out a message...that was very accessible at a time that people were ready to hear it,” said Trumbull Professor of American History Nancy F. Cott.

“She was successful because she followed that up, because she wasn’t just an intellectual, she was a journalist with a history of activism. She formed an organization.”

In 1966, Friedan founded America’s National Organization for Women (NOW) and became its first president, campaigning for gender equality, abortion rights, and maternity leave.

She also helped establish the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969 and the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971.

“Her own personal legacy is very bound up with the whole legacy of the feminist movement which was much, much broader than the book,” Cott said.

In the spring of 1982, Friedan lived in Mather House and was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics (IOP), according to articles in The Crimson. She noted at the time that her acceptance of the title was not without its ironies.

“I’ve been taking a lot of joking about that. Obviously it’s a holdover from the time Fellows were only fellows. But that’s no longer the case,” she told The Crimson that year.

A polarizing figure, Friedan ultimately drew criticism from her feminist colleagues for her conservative stance on issues like homosexuality. She insisted that the feminist movement remain in the American mainstream, and condemned those who characterized men as enemies and rejected family life.

“You can’t rest on the assumption that equality is here to stay,” Friedan said at the IOP in 1980. “I don’t want to see a generation of lonely, tired, bitter women in the next few years in backlash against what I have worked so hard for,” she added.

Friedan’s examination of the female condition has influenced the direction of gender studies today.

“The things that she pointed to and that she taught my generation of women to look at and think about has definitely had a big impact on how I’ve formulated my teaching,” said Brinton, who currently teaches Sociology 22: “Gender Stratifaction: Work, Power, and Gender in America.”

Her death acts as a reminder of the activist spirit of the 1960s, Brinton added.

“There isn’t a very unified voice for women now,” Brinton said. “Her death does remind us that we need to create a unified voice again, but it will be different from the one in the 1960s and 70s.”

Friedan graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1942, where she also served as an editor of the campus newspaper. She spent a year as a graduate student in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and later left to become a journalist.

Her marriage to Carl Friedan ended in 1969. She is survived by her three children.

—Staff writer Giselle Barcia can be reached at gbarcia@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.