[Mb-civic] The woman warrior

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/0
7/the_woman_warrior/

The Boston Globe
February 7, 2006

The woman warrior

By Ellen Goodman

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.

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is
ellengoodman at globe.com.

(c) Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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