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= ** Betty Friedan and Women’s Rights ** =

1920: Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gives women the right to vote 1921: Born Bettye Naomi Goldstein in Peoria, Illinois 1942: Graduates from Smith College 1943: Moves to New York to work as a reporter 1947: Marries Carl Friedan (has three children by 1956) 1950s: Works as a freelance journalist for mass-market women’s magazines 1963: Publishes //The Feminine Mystique// 1964: Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes, establishing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and forbidding employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age. 1966: Co-founds the National Organization for Women (NOW) 1966-1970: Serves as president of NOW 1969: Divorces Carl Friedan 1969: Helps found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws 1971: Helps found the National Women’s Political Caucus 1972: Latest version of the Equal Rights Amendment passes both houses of Congress; not ratified by number of states required (38 of 50) to become part of the Constitution 1973: //Roe v. Wade// legalizes abortion 1981: Publishes //The Second Stage// 1993: Publishes //The Fountain of Age// 2006: Dies in Washington, D.C. = ** Document A ** =

** Source: **// Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition //, eds. Susan Carter, Scott Gartner, Michael Haines, Alan Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) ** Note: ** These are several indicators on the presence of women in the American labor force from 1900 to 1990.

=** Document B ** = = =

** Source: ** 1950s Advertisements for Schlitz Beer and Lux Stockings ** Note: ** Before publishing //The Feminine Mystique// in 1963, Betty Friedan wrote for a variety of mass-market magazines, including //Good Housekeeping// and //Cosmopolitan//. While working at these magazines, Friedan chafed at the representations of women that the periodicals presented. When she wrote //The Feminine Mystique//, Friedan condemned the magazines that she had worked for and was particularly critical of the advertisements, two examples of which are below.

=** Document C ** =

** Source: ** Betty Friedan, //The Feminine Mystique// (New York: Norton, 1963) ** Note: ** Friedan’s //Feminine Mystique// was a bestseller when it was published, and it has sold over three million copies since.

The suburban housewife—she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife—freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of. In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture.

Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their station wagons full of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children’s clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rug-hooking class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: “Occupation: housewife.”

For over fifteen years, the words written for women, and the words women used when they talked to each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the room and talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems with their children, or how to keep their husbands happy, or improve their children’s school, or cook chicken or make slipcovers. Nobody argued whether women were inferior or superior to men; they were simply different. Words like “emancipation” and “career” sounded strange and embarrassing; no one had used them for years.

When a Frenchwoman named Simone de Beauvoir wrote a book called //The Second Sex//, an American critic commented that she obviously “didn’t know what life was all about,” and besides, she was talking about French women. The “woman problem” in America no longer existed. If a woman had a problem in the 1950’s and 1960’s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself.  = ** Document D ** =

** Source: ** National Organization for Women, Statement of Purpose (1966) ** Note: ** NOW’s Statement of Purpose was adopted at its first National Conference in Washington, D.C. on October 29, 1966. Betty Friedan co-wrote this document, co-founded the organization, and served as its president from 1966-1970.

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.

NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women, first and foremost, are human beings, who, like all other people in our society, must have the chance to develop their fullest human potential. We believe that women can achieve such equality only by accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society, as part of the decision-making mainstream of American political, economic and social life. We organize to initiate or support action, nationally, or in any part of this nation, by individuals or organizations, to break through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination against women in government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the judiciary, the labor unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion and every other field of importance in American society.

In all the professions considered of importance to society, and in the executive ranks of industry and government, women are losing ground. Where they are present it is only a token handful. Women comprise less than 1% of federal judges; less than 4% of all lawyers; 7% of doctors. Yet women represent 51% of the U.S. population. We believe that the power of American law, and the protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to the civil rights of all individuals, must be effectively applied and enforced to isolate and remove patterns of sex discrimination, to ensure equality of opportunity in employment and education, and equality of civil and political rights and responsibilities on behalf of women, as well as for Negroes and other deprived groups.

We reject the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole burden of supporting himself, his wife, and family, and that a woman is automatically entitled to lifelong support by a man upon her marriage, or that marriage, home and family are primarily woman's world and responsibility -- hers, to dominate -- his to support. We believe that a true partnership between the sexes demands a different concept of marriage, an equitable sharing of the responsibilities of home and children and of the economic burdens of their support.

In the interests of the human dignity of women, we will protest, and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and practices of our major social institutions. Such images perpetuate contempt for women by society and by women for themselves. We are similarly opposed to all policies and practices -- in church, state, college, factory, or office -- which, in the guise of protectiveness, not only deny opportunities but also foster in women self-denigration, dependence, and evasion of responsibility, undermine their confidence in their own abilities and foster contempt for women.  = ** Document E ** =

** Source: ** Redstockings Manifesto (1969) ** Note: ** The Redstockins were a radical feminist organization founded in February 1969. Many of its members were critical of the National Organization for Women, which they saw as being too moderate in its goals and tactics.

Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives. Our humanity is denied. Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence.

We identify the agents of our oppression as men. Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest. All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented. Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force. They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position. All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women.

Attempts have been made to shift the burden of responsibility from men to institutions or to women themselves. We condemn these arguments as evasions. Institutions alone do not oppress; they are merely tools of the oppressor. To blame institutions implies that men and women are equally victimized, obscures the fact that men benefit from the subordination of women, and gives men the excuse that they are forced to be oppressors. On the contrary, any man is free to renounce his superior position provided that he is willing to be treated like a woman by other men.

Our chief task at present is to develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundation of all our institutions. Consciousness-raising is not “therapy,” which implies the existence of individual solutions and falsely assumes that the male-female relationship is purely personal, but the only method by which we can ensure that our program for liberation is based on the concrete realities of our lives.

We call on all our sisters to unite with us in struggle. We call on all men to give up their male privileges and support women’s liberation in the interest of our humanity and their own. In fighting for our liberation we will always take the side of women against their oppressors. We will not ask what is "revolutionary” or “reformist,” only what is good for women. The time for individual skirmishes has passed. This time we are going all the way.  = ** Document F ** = ** Source: ** Equal Rights Amendment, as approved by both houses of Congress in 1972.   ** Note: ** Congress had considered versions of an Equal Rights Amendment since 1923, and both houses finally passed one in 1972. The brief full text of the 1972 Amendment is below. After passing the ERA, Congress sent it to the states for approval, and if it had been ratified by 38 of the 50 states, it would have become the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution. At its ten-year deadline, only 35 states had ratified, killing the Amendment.

SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

SECTION 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. =** Document G  **=

** Source: ** Protesters outside the Albert Thomas Convention Center in Houston, Texas during the 1977 National Women's Conference. ** Note: ** While the states were debating ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, some Americans expressed opposition to the campaign for women’s rights.