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Betty Friedan

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Betty Friedan circa 1975.

What Betty Friedan Knew

Judge the author of the “Feminine Mystique” not by the gains she made, but by her experience.
Women at National Organization for Women demonstration

Betty Friedan and the Movement That Outgrew Her

Friedan was indispensable to second-wave feminism. And yet she was difficult to like.
Betty Friedan

The Abandonment of Betty Friedan

What does the academy have against the mother of second-wave feminism?
Book cover of Feminine Mystique

The Powerful, Complicated Legacy of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique'

The acclaimed reformer stoked the white, middle-class feminist movement and brought critical understanding to a “problem that had no name”
A crowd of Feminist protestors marching in New York.

A New Look at the Feminist Earthquake

How women's liberation transformed America and why our understanding of 1963-1973 needs to include more voices.
A women's suffrage demonstration with banners on the steps of the US Capitol in 1917.

Feminism in the Dock

Can (and should) conservatives reclaim feminism from the radicals?
An eight photo collage of pictures showing the proper way for women to smile

Just Wear Your Smile

Few who encounter Positive Psychology via self-help books and therapy know that its gender politics valorize the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy.
Illustration of a 1950s woman surrounded by orange flames, pink background

Reading Betty Friedan After the Fall of Roe

The problem no longer has no name, and yet we refuse to solve it.

Andrew Yang and the Failson Mystique

America has already witnessed the largest UBI experiment known to history — the postwar middle-class housewife. And she was utterly miserable.
Women's liberation movement demonstrating in Washington D.C.

The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting Over Them, Explained

If you have no idea which wave of feminism we’re in right now, read this.

Up Against the Centerfold

What it was like to report on feminism for Playboy in 1969

Birthright

What's next for Planned Parenthood?
Collage of The Golden Girls, a suitcase, a golf ball, viagra pills, and a Welcome to Florida sign.

How Old Age Was Reborn

“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth go too far?
Judith Jones

The Woman Who Made America Take Cookbooks Seriously

Judith Jones edited culinary greats such as Julia Child and Edna Lewis—and identified the pleasure at the core of traditional “women’s work.”
Women march for free abortion on demand.

Abortion On Demand

The surprising history of a politically charged phrase.
Regina King as Shirley Chisholm in "Shirley," a new film.

The True History Behind Netflix's 'Shirley' Movie

A new film dramatizes Shirley Chisholm's history-making bid to become the first Black woman president in 1972.
Percy Sutton, Flo Kennedy, and another Black reproduction activist.

How Black Leaders Formed the Reproductive Justice Movement

Before the end of Black History Month, we should remember some of the leaders who shaped the movement in the years before Roe v. Wade.
Ruth Ehrlich and Aileen Hernandez sitting next to each other at a National Organization for Women event.

Labor Union Radicals Built the US Feminist Movement

Labor radicals played a crucial role in organizing the struggles to topple gender hierarchies, and should serve as an inspiration for labor feminists today.
Demonstrators hold signs that read "Keep abortion legal" and "The Lord is pro-choice."

Abortion Is About Freedom, Not Just Privacy

The right to abortion is an affirmation that women and girls have the right to control their own destiny.
Third World Women's Alliance member demonstrating in crowd

How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights

As liberation movements bloomed, they offered a vision of reproductive justice that was about equality, not just “choice.”