Feminism Darwinian Revival Betty Friedan Through decades of social activism strategic thinking and powerful writing Friedan is one of contemporary society s most effective leaders Betty Friedan Born on February 14 1921 and died on February 14 2006 on her 85th birthday at her home in Washington Born and grew up in Illinois Felt marginalized because she was Jewish in the Mid West Background Her father worked as a button seller and later owned a jewelry shop Her mother quit a job as a women s page editor for a newspaper when she became pregnant with Betty in order to become a housewife Betty realized how frustrated her mother had been as a housewife when her mother took over the family shop after Betty s father fell ill Her mother s new life outside the home seemed to be much more satisfying Her Life Went to Smith College where she felt completely liberated She was a brilliant student who graduated summa cum laude in 1942 She trained as a psychologist but never pursued a career in the field When she wrote The Feminine Mystique she was a suburban housewife and mother who enhanced her husband s income by writing freelance articles for women s magazines Her Experiences She became a journalist during World War II when there were more positions available because the male journalists were off at war As a reporter for the Workers Press in New York she saw that women were paid a small part of what men were paid and were then fired when the men returned from war And when Betty Friedan asked for maternity leave she too was fired No wonder she felt so strongly bout these issues The Feminine Mystique In 1963 Feminine Mystique became an immediate best seller over one million sold 3 years later she founded NOW National Organization for Women She was a member of the National Women s Political Caucus a founder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and a key leader in the struggle for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment The Feminine Mystique With its impassioned yet clear eyed analysis of the issues that affected women s lives in the decades after World War II including enforced domesticity limited career prospects and as chronicled in later editions the campaign for legalized abortion The Feminine Mystique is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century The Problem That Has No Name The problem lay buried unspoken for many years in the minds of American women It was a strange stirring a sense of dissatisfaction a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth 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 problem that has no name The problem that has no name the feeling that raising a husband children and home is not enough women want more There occupation back then was HOUSEWIFE so many women wanted careers During the 1950 s and 1960 s if women felt upset or depressed they blamed it on themselves or their marriage they went to the doctors saying I am so ashamed but I am not happy with my life The Doctors did not even have a name for this So many women felt like this but most were too ashamed to talk about it too each other For over 15 years women found this problem harder to talk about than sex Women s goals were to get married have children lots of them and have a nice home The problem that has no name which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease Betty Friedan broke down barriers and influenced many women just by talking about these issues in her book She was very influential What are some of the ways we can tell these barriers have been broken Nancy Chodorow Nancy Chodorow Born January 20 1944 in New York NY Nancy Chodorow is an interdisciplinary scholar that describes herself as a self defined interpretive or even humanistic psychoanalytic sociologist and psychoanalytic feminist She made important contributions to the study of gender relations and family Family Her father Marvin was a professor of applied physics She married Michael Reich a professor of economics had two children with him Rachel and Gabriel and was separated from him in 1977 Education She received her BA from Radcliffe College She was trained by Beatrice and John W M Whiting in a culture and personality anthropology that in retrospect could be considered prefeminist but was at the time gender and generation sensitive Chodorow received her PhD from Brandeis University in 1975 She is widely considered the leading psychoanalytic feminist theorist and is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association often speaking at its Congresses Career She spent many years as a professor in the departments of sociology and clinical psychology at the University of California Berkeley Influential It is difficult to imagine the shape that feminist literary criticism might have taken in the last twenty years without the enabling influence of The Reproduction of Mothering The importance of Chodorow s work cannot be overestimated Marianne Hirsch author of The Mother Daughter Plot Chodorow has extensively pursued the question of why women desire motherhood What are the traits of a dad What are the traits of a Mom Gender Personality and the Reproduction of Mothering Girls and boys are taught appropriate behaviors and learn appropriate feelings but how do women become mothers She says biologics and instinct do not justify why women become mothers Women s mothering includes the capacities for its own reproduction Accounts of socialization and repetition help to explain the ideologies about gender roles Gender and Reproduction Psychoanalysts argue that personality both results from and consists in the ways a child appropriates internalizes and organizes early experiences in their family This explains why how you are raised has something to do with the way you will act usually depending on gender There is an assumption that women s destiny includes primary parenting but in reality most psychoanalysts say this job is laid out for both genders But to explain why women mothers are more likely to identify with the role of primary care giver is