Betty Friedan, Author, Lecturer, a Founder of National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), 1921 - 2006

Born Betty Goldstein, she graduated from Smith College in 1942 and worked for five years before marrying Carl Friedan (who she divorced in 1969) and for a while settled uncomfortably into the life of a housewife, mother, and occasional freelance writer. Discovering in 1957 that several of her college classmates were as dissatisfied with their lives as she was with her own, she began a series of studies that eventually resulted in the landmark work �The Feminine Mystique,� which exposed the unhappiness middle-class women felt over living less-than-fulfilling lives, which catapulted her to public fame. A founder of NOW, National Women's Political Caucus, and NARAL, she traveled and lectured all over the world and wrote for such diverse publications as McCall's, Harper's, The New York Times, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. In more recent years, she has been a Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern California, New York University, and George Mason University. Her new book, The Fountain of Age, is based on 10 years of research on changing sex roles and the aging process. Currently she is a Scholar at the Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian, and Distinguished Professor of Social Evolution at Mount Vernon College.

Article by Alexander S