[Mb-civic] The woman warrior - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  The woman warrior

By Ellen Goodman  |  February 7, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

WHEN THE news came of Betty Friedan's death on her 85th birthday, I 
remembered Aug. 26, 1970, the Women's Strike for Equality. I remembered 
Betty Friedan parading down New York's Fifth Avenue, with tens of 
thousands of exhilarated women behind her.

I also remembered the afternoon edition of my paper illustrating that 
march with two front-page photos. On the left was the pretty, blond, 
smiling figurehead of some unknown group of Happy Homemakers. On the 
right was Betty Friedan, mouth open in midshout, face contorted, as 
unattractive a photo of this woman as was ever chosen by any editor. 
Under both pictures ran a simple, loaded question: Which one do you choose?

This came to mind not only because Betty won her place in the history 
books. It reminded me of what this passionate and irascible, 
strong-willed, and difficult woman was up against: a culture with 
prescribed roles for women and harsh ways of slapping down those who 
didn't conform.

Betty Friedan, author and agitator, most assuredly did not conform. Not 
to Peoria, Ill., where she grew up. Not to suburbia, where she raised 
her children. Not even, always, to feminism.

She was born the year after suffrage passed. Her book, the book, ''The 
Feminine Mystique," was published in 1963, the year that Adlai Stevenson 
told my graduating class at Radcliffe how important our education would 
be in raising our children. It was released to paperback and fame in 
1964, the year I worked in the sex-segregated research pool at Newsweek 
magazine -- and thought I was lucky to have the job.

It's easy to forget now what it was like before Betty named ''the 
problem that had no name" and, in futurist Alvin Toffler's words, 
''pulled the trigger on history." We know how far women have come, but 
for every woman who believes life has improved, there is another who 
believes that life has become more stressful. Some of us believe both 
things at the same time.

The women's movement is sometimes treated as a vast propaganda machine 
that convinced women of their discontent and need for change. But 
Betty's book struck a chord with women who were already fine-tuned to 
listen.

''It was a strange stirring," she wrote. ''A sense of dissatisfaction, a 
yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the 
United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made 
the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut 
butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and 
Brownies, lay beside her husband at night -- she was afraid to ask even 
of herself the silent question -- 'Is this all?' "

The most powerful catalyst for change, sociologists will tell you, is 
when people learn what they already know. Betty didn't invent the 
discontented housewife. She described the discontent. She didn't create 
the second-class citizenship. She analyzed it.

''Maybe it wasn't education that was the problem keeping American women 
from 'adjusting to their role as women,' but that narrow definition of 
'the role of women,' " she said.

For combating the mystique, she was shunned by neighbors. For her 
refusal to conform, her children were kicked out of the car pool. She 
was called ''more of a threat to the United States than the Russians." 
But with one resounding click of recognition, with one page turned after 
another, women who thought they were ''the only one" came out of 
isolation and into a women's movement in the widest sense of that word.

Betty was dismissed as radical by the middle class and as middle class 
by the radicals. She helped found the National Organization for Women, 
the National Women's Political Caucus, and NARAL. But she didn't brook 
fools easily nor did she brook disagreements gracefully. She teetered on 
high heels and gave speeches that never ended. The battles with her 
feminist peers were legendary.

For as long as she lived, women would come up to Betty gushing, ''You 
changed my life." I saw her dismiss them summarily with a wave of her 
hand, ''Oh, people tell me that all the time."

Today, ''Desperate Housewives" is a television show. Mothers at home 
still bristle at her description of their ''dissatisfaction." Women in 
Fortune 500 companies can also ask ''Is this all?"

But no one can doubt her role in this unfinished revolution. Betty 
Friedan put her shoulder and her mind to the task of opening doors and 
widening that ''narrow definition of 'the role of women.' "

In gratitude for that fine discontent, for that refusal to conform, let 
me say it one last time: Betty, you changed our lives.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/07/the_woman_warrior/
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