Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter

"Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique challenged the midcentury myth of suburban women’s domestic fulfillment, tapped into the often-inchoate frustrations of housewives and mothers, and ignited the second wave of the ‘contemporary’ women’s movement when it was published in 1963. Friedan’s manifesto sold more than a million copies and won legions of fans who had silently shouldered the drudgery of housework and the glorification of motherhood. Yet, within a few years, Friedan was mocked and shunned by younger feminists who protested that she was too white and middle-class, and that her focus on legal and economic equality was too narrow. Through nearly 100 interviews with those who knew Friedan and her own deep archival research, Shteir argues for an understanding of Friedan beyond her image as a pugnacious rebel detached from the newer generation of feminists like Gloria Steinem. Shteir’s biography is a perfect fit for Yale University Press’ Jewish Lives series, as she captures young Betty Friedan, a “short, pudgy bibliophile” and a precocious Jewish girl from a Reform, upper-middle-class family in St. Louis, as she endured hostility and anti-Semitism. Interested in labor, unions and theater, Friedan was a quarrelsome nonconformist with a temper who graduated from Smith College, was a fractious founder of the National Organization for Women, visionary and paranoid, unyielding in continuing conflicts that by her death in 2006 had cemented her image as uncompromising and resistant to a capacious women’s movement — one that was in sync with calls for racial equality and anti-war activity. Shteir’s recognition of her accomplishments and appreciation of her principles go a long way to rewrite Friedan’s life and legacy."