rachel shteir is the offer.

author of four books and many articles essays and reviews. her current book is betty friedan and magnificent disruptor. she teaches at the theater school at depaul university and our moderator is. gioia diliberto the author of seven books, three historical novels and four biographies and a play. her writing, which focuses on women's, has been praised for combining rich storytelling and literary grace with deep research to provide to bring alive worlds as varied as jazz, age, paris and century chicago ballet epic paris and disco manhattan. her books have been translated into several languages and. she has been a judge for prominent literary contests as a journalist, georgia has written for many publications, including

new york times, the wall street journal, the chicago tribune, the los angeles times, the smithsonian and town and country and excuse me, rachel's book be available for purchase outside the black curtains afterward. and we will have a signing right behind us. so turn the rest of the program over to you. thank you. can everybody hear me? thank you for coming? betty friedan, as you probably know, is a monumental figure in the history of feminism. her bestselling book, the feminine mystique, was widely credited with sparking a second wave feminism when it was in 1963 and sold more than a million copies, she, the national for women and national women's caucus, but she was also difficult person within personality and in her life time she was a very controversial

figure her life after the feminist battles of the 1970s is less well known, but she continued to for women's causes until the end of her. rachel's book is the first betty friedan biographer in 25 years, and it's based on rachel's intense exhaustive research in archives and more. 80 interviews. it will be officially published on tuesday and all of the pre-publication reviews have been raves. so i think i'd like to start with, rachel, reading a little bit from the book to give you a taste of what it's what it's about. julia, thank you so much for introduction and introduction to betty. the section that i'm going to from as joy i mentioned betty

was one of the co-founders of the national organization for women is, the largest organization in america. also and still exists today and also is one that tried to unite women from diverse backgrounds. and that was betty's and other people's for it and so this a scene at in washington dc at at a conference where betty was actually she wasn't attending the conference as a participant it was a conference for women who worked for women's rights also were were part of the government. but betty was there as a journalist covering this conference and this is the story

of the founding of now. and this is in 1966 at the washington between june 28th and 30/30. this conference targets for action aimed continue the work done by the presidents on the status of women under jfk. but the first day discouraged the female delegates and friedan whom kath catherine east, coauthor of the commission report, had invited as a journalist late in the afternoon. it started to rain. so the group convened in the east room instead of the rose garden standing next to lady bird johnson began by addressing the distinguished and, very attractive delegates. he took credit for title seven recommended that women expanded their volunteerism and joked about his wife's interest in the grass in the rose garden he

listed accomplished ments of the commission as if women's equality had been achieved and figuratively patted our heads. friedan recalled. the next day the national women's party alice paul's organization, tried to introduce a resolution to bring the equal rights amendment under consider. they were refused shirley irritated friedan invited pauli murray and a group of women to her room at the washington hilton. that night, marie joined, as did dorothy hanner and carolyn davis, the women's department of the united autoworkers. friedan had met while researching her still uncompleted second book. there was also catherine k clarion, back head of the wisconsin commission on the status of women, mary eastwood and catherine conroy, who worked for the communications union. conroy and clarence beck wanted to work through existing channels by introducing a motion condemning the employment

opportunity commission. murray, armed with a yellow legal pad, sided with friedan's activist approach at around 11 p.m., nancy, a young dean at the university of wisconsin, sitting on the floor, dared to wonder if the needed a new women's organization. friedan shouted who invited you get out? get out! this is my room and my liquor. thank you, rachel. so can you can see why people not very often did not like betty friedan and found her difficult and rachel, why should we care about? betty friedan today? well, so as you anouma stated in your introduction, betty wrote the feminine mystique, which is one of the most important

feminist books of the 20th century, if the most important one it the the feminine was yes. as you noted, a huge, huge bestseller. but what it did was it established women as a category which at time simply did exist. so you could say that betty really threw the first shot right at that, which many other people then up. so that's thing number one is the feminine mystique. and thing number two, the national organization for women as. i said this is an it was an amazing organization. nothing like existed. and the goal to combine again to to unite women as a category and have women be able to agitate for equality of pay, equality of

representation and other things like that and then also betty went in the rest of her life to found many other organizations devoted to women and women's rights, including the national women's political caucus, which was solely devoted to getting women into government. but she also then founded a women's bank, a women's think tank, a women's i mean, she just was tireless in her pursuit of women's rights and trying to get equality for women and it's it's so i think we need she's important because we need to remember how long the struggle for women's rights has been going on in this country and some of the rights that betty fought are being turned back and and it's it's also important because i think she what what people pay attention to most of all is her temper.

and not the things that she achieved, the ideas that she had. do you do you find that young women that you meet and your don't think about her don't? yes. some cases have not even heard of. yes. so i find in general, betty is much less read the feminine mystique much less read in universities now than ten years ago. the feminine mystique. well, was written in 63, as you said, it's 60 years old this year but many women and gender studies programs do not teach it or. they teach one chapter of it. and it's taught in history programs. but then it's really it's often taught. i've talked to a lot of historians about this. and it's often taught in conjunction with some later book as a corrective so to show what betty did that was wrong, you

know, and as i said to me the most important thing is she she she showed to amass how women's rights were. so what do the current gender studies people think she wrong and did wrong and what did object to about the feminine mystique. yeah well so many, many, many i mean, most of all though i would say the lack of the feminine mystique was really a book about housewives. right? it was about the suburbs and, how women felt existentially in the suburbs. so there have been a number of books and, you know, famous books and famous essays correctives, talking about, you know, betty, should have been more inclusive in her, you know,

in her construction of of women. but, of course, she was writing in this book in the late fifties is one thing. and pre-civil rights and i would say that i mean, my my i don't want to say defense, but my response to the critics is that no one was writing about race and class in that way, in the way that we now consider basically normal. so so one thing is, is her lack of about race and also her she didn't really talk about poor women. she thought that revolution of women had to start in the middle class. that was her argument. and then another problem with the book that a lot of critics have pointed out is that it also, you could argue, could say that homophobic it takes there's passages of it that take a very

fifties freudian approach to gay men's specific weekly and that that really that criticism really dogged her so you think that that gender studies crowd are engendering a disrespect for yes and and that is that a that's a dangerous thing. well in, my opinion it is i mean, i don't think we can use the standard of today to judge a work that was written, as i said, priests, civil rights, priest, sexual revolution, stonewall. i mean, that's why i say betty really threw the first shot. she she she and that extraordinarily difficult to do and you know i mean i think you can tell i read this passage and it's funny. right. but she i believe that she acted in this way. she was really intent on getting people to hear message.

and she felt that the only way do that was to yell or scream or to something. i mean. right. that's just that's that's that's what she believed i think she she had a kind of righteousness to her about this. and she was just not going to back down and she was not going to be polite. she was not going to be civil. she was not going to obey robert's rules in a meeting, you know, but i think she felt that she could not do that. she could not. so a lot of young women today owe a lot to. yes, absolutely. i mean, i think when you think about 60 years ago and the things that women didn't have women couldn't open a bank account by themselves, i mean, there's a whole long list there was discrimination in job hiring. there was widespread sexism in office culture and culture. so betty was, constantly just fighting this idea, oh, women don't really even need to be

equal. why do you even need that? why you even want that? she would go on these talk shows in the early sixties. it was the advent of television and and announcers would just would just her and humiliate her, you know, so terrible. yeah. so all the writing about betty went before your book. what was tone of it? and how is your book a different take on betty? well, so i really tried to. i think the main thing is the other two major biographies were written in the 1990s. there was one written by a journalist and then there was one written by a scholar and the one written by the scholar of them are quite critical of her. these ways that i'm describing and what i try to do is just be fair to her. i would say that they were writing. i want to sort of backtrack they were writing in the 1990s when she was still alive. and so they had to interview her

and. as anybody who's ever written a biography knows, that's a sort of mixed blessing. if the subject is still alive. and so i think of them had, you know, they both interview her and they both had sort of struggled. she had a clear idea about how she wanted to be remembered and what legacy was. and if you did not fall into line with that she would just you know, she would really give it to you. i mean, i've read these transcripts, these these previous biographers, several then after these biographies gave up writing biographies about because she was so difficult, so okay, so are they men in the biographies. one was a man and some of the others were women. so they were they both genders. and but so the main thing that i really tried hard do in the book was just be fair to and to not judge her. her outbursts. she had these outbursts and and i tried write about those and i

tried to understand them as opposed to judge them, which what i think the job of a biographer is did she respond very badly to what was written about her after she'd cooperated? the biographers. yeah, that's what scared away i mean. yeah, she had different responses to the two biographies because they're very different biography by the scholar, which is very detailed, very particular. but he had a specific about her, which is that suppressed her, you know -- when she was writing the feminine mystique, she, she called herself a housewife. she wasn't writing about other people, also called herself a housewife. the problem that had no name, that's what she called this anomie that middle class women had. but she also she she described herself as having this problem. and this biographer claimed that she exactly the extent to which she was a housewife.

he pointed out she had been a radical journalist, the forties. she had been a writer for women's magazines in the fifties. and so he he according to him, she covered up her career order to exaggerate her identity as a housewife. and she went she did not like that at all. she did not care for that at all. and she tried to sue him she's tried to stop the book. she did not succeed. and, you know, the book came out and became very worried about her legacy. and then she published a memoir, which is terrible. i'm sorry to say. that is really bad. it's a great memoir. it's not insightful, you know, in the way you want a memoir to be. but the main thing i think the purpose for her of the memoir was to that this particular biography had gotten it all wrong about her, that she was really a housewife. yeah, she was a housewife i mean, i would just say she was also a she, you know, the biographer was right.

in a sense. she was a radical journalist and she was she was a for women's magazines. and she was very active. however, she felt like a housewife and she was living in upstate new york in rockland county. she was she had three children. and she had this enormous and her husband went into the city commuted into the city. so despite the fact that she did have this somewhat career, she also at the time was the fifties. she was being asked to be housewife. and it was stultifying to live in the suburb. and she just she felt so to me what this sparked the previous mrs. is just that what she felt which was trapped. she felt trapped right. like lot of women at the time didn't she understood those women she understood them. they were invoiced. invoiced what, what they were feeling. and so that they felt that the reason, the book was a hit was because women that the first paragraph which is this amazing

paragraph describing what it's like to you know, wrap butter sandwiches and, you know, send your kid off to school, whatever. and how mind numbing is. and then the last thing is and you're not alone and read that. and they just they felt they felt seen where did the phrase is the problem that has no name come from that she coined that phrase. yes yes, she claimed it. i don't know don't know where she she had a gift for that kind of snappy thing, you know. and rachel, do you think her brand of feminism still valid today? yes i mean, and i do. and why you think it is? i mean? because i think the things that she fought for, like equality, pay and equality, political representation and, what were those were okay child care, universal, federal de-funded child care and reproductive. those are all things that we don't.

and you know, to me, she had it right, actually, she had a lot right. although she was not perfect. she was not a saint. right. but she this idea that women were equal, they deserved equal everything. and we still don't have that right. what was her relationship with gloria steinem and the other the other women feminists day? yes, of course. gloria is still around. gloria is still around. did you talk to, gloria, very briefly? gloria did not really to participate in the book. the reason being that gloria betty did not speak after 1972. what happened was. after the national organization for women was founded, it very quickly became radicalized and a lot of younger women flooded into it. and they were very interested in, you know, we would call now identity politics and what betty called sexual politics.

and they were less interested in vision of feminism, equality and bourgeois, you know, they they were radicals. and betty was very alienated from this. and so gloria was more in that camp gloria was 12 years younger than betty. she you know, she she was interested in identity politics. and i would be remiss also if i didn't mention gay women's struggle to out and to be counted in the women's movement betty. really did not support that. she thought that it would weaken women's movement. this was around 1969, whereas and kate mallette and other a lot of the other younger feminists did support that. so betty really found herself on the other. you know, in a more conservative i guess i would say, place with with the housewives rapping peanut butter sandwiches.

exactly right. so was there a blow up with gloria steinem? yes. and can you tell us a little about the blowup there were a number of things. you know, betty, one of her, i guess i would say, less attractive sides was that she would speak to the media disparagingly about other people, including gloria and this began to happen in 1971. and 1972. and so, betty betty was on the record as, you know, saying gloria steinem has no ideas. you know her. you know,' thing. obviously, gloria didn't like that. you know and gloria never responded was very you know, she she took the high road. i guess i would say. but she you know, obviously they couldn't work together as allies

so, gloria never denounced betty. no no, betty denounce gloria and that sort of boomerang onto betty. yeah. can you tell us about some of the other controversies that betty was with? yeah. well, probably the two that are the best known and the most, i don't know, lively or whatever. there's the one that i mentioned about gay women and that erupted in 1969, when betty used the phrase lavender menace at a national organization for meeting. in other words, she thought that women, lesbian women who wanted be counted equally or who wanted their identity to be brought much more to the forefront of the national organization for women she thought that they she called she called them the lavender menace. i'm laughing. i know it's not funny in the sense that you know it's it's not very nice. but what she was concerned about

was the women's movement being weakened then i think the other big controversy had was erupted when she did later apologize for the lavender menace but the other big controversy was in 1972, when she was working as a delegate for shirley chisholm and she she talked about she she wrote a press release in which she told everybody that that they were going to have a traveling watermelon feast in harlem. okay. and this list leaked to the media and, of course, it was a disaster because it's you know, it's terrible that she would say that. so those are two really big horrify things that she did that affect those. those are pretty big and pretty horrifying. yeah. and how did you get involved in writing this book? it was a commission. they asked me, yeah, yeah yale asked me to do it, but that's a little glib really. what? how i got involved in it was on

the on the 50th anniversary of the feminine, i wrote an article for the chronicle of higher education is a newspaper for scholars and the article was about i actually had never read the feminine mystique as a as a student and so i read it for the first time. then. and at the time there were a number of coming out that, you know, like one of them was the end of men by rosen. and then there was another by naomi wolf. and these i read these books. i felt that those books took from ideas or refuted betty's ideas, but without ever mentioning betty's name. and so and then i the feminine mystique and i was blown away by it. it's very gorgeously written, although, as i said, it has problems, but it's very gorgeously written. and and so i wanted to write something about that.

i wanted write how betty has kind of been erased despite having this powerful book and really liked the essay and and so yeah. so they asked me to write for series this book and and that's how it happened. and what was your idea of betty when you started the book and? how did it evolve and change over the course of writing it, i think the first you know, i don't know that had you know, i of course i read the other biography year and i was sort of frustrated by them. and then i think the first thing that happened was i started to interview people and had a negative story to tell about. betty. and if you're you know, i was i felt a little bit defensive of her because there were people remember and had held grudges that were 60 years old. and so i was i was very interested this and, you know, obviously again, she had this

just what what do i want to call it like a knack for a really making people making people upset she had a knack for just upsetting people getting in her own. yeah. getting her own way or whatever. and so, you know, those stories accumulated and then and then as i went into archives, though, i saw another side of her, you know, there was like a general, a really generous side. she could be extra generous, especially to younger women, you know, who she saw. she had women who were her surrogate daughters, who she really helped in many, many ways, you know, she could really she could be very generous and very kind. i think she you know, so, yeah, as i began to get this fuller picture of her also as someone who was very kind of uncomfortable with other people just period. right. i don't think she was although she was in the public eye or at

the time, i don't think she really liked being in the public eye. she said when she was she was asked to lead? now she was asked to be the first president of now and she said she had a writer's temperament. she didn't want to do it and women, many of the women who were to kind of get a women's thing started her to do it because she was this huge. but she really hesitated she thought of herself mostly as a writer. she thought of herself as a writer and a journalist. yeah, for sure. yeah mm hmm. what was her relationship with her own family? with her husband. children? yes. well, so her marriage was very tense. stress also violent, tempestuous and violent. she married someone who was not. i would i would say she was not really her intellectual equal. i mean, she was she was a

brilliant person. i want to maybe i haven't that or stressed that enough she was really when she was in school. smith she just she won all the awards she was a dazzling intellect. she went to berkeley for one year to grad school to get a ph.d. and then she dropped out to become this radical journalist. but in those days, you know, she like 25 or something, and you to get married there was, you know you couldn't really it was very hard for women you couldn't not get married so she married this guy who was kind of i don't know, he just it was not a good match. he he he was kind of like a i don't know what kind of guy. but anyway, they fought all the time and they drank a lot. everyone then of course, and so it was violent and you know, everyone knew that. and betty was always was a sort of tragic thing about her. she worried worried that this would come that people would learn of violence in her marriage and it would discredit

the women's movement, when you it was violent. did beat her up. he hit her and. she hit him. it went both ways. and there are there are stories this in the media going back to 1970. it's really quite amazing. so it was known, you know, but people didn't you'd see dropped and people wouldn't really talk about it like she she one time there was a protest at the oak room in new york and a and she had a black eye and so she was late. and finally she had a friend her with her makeup and she got there and she was she just was late and she was terrified people would would would see it and again, that she would be discredited and everything that they had worked for so hard be would be, would fall apart. but their their marriage was was tempestuous and it was you know, it very painful to her that it failed. she got divorced in 71 and she was never she had several lovers, but she never she never

married anybody. what was her relationship like with her children. okay. then her children, she had children and they all are very successful. i will say that she was not you know, there were certain things and her this is true for her and husband carl they were fighting i have to put that in the backdrop but also they there were certain ways that they were really amazing. right. like they, you know they like to they would go out into backyard and look at sputnik like look at the sputnik launch that of thing. like they were very and they were like intellectually curious parents and they were always to their children. but then there are other ways that she was a terrible by many standards like you know, she sent the kids to school in a taxi. one famous story all the time like would never take them to school. they knock. when she was writing, she would close the door and they'd knock on the door. mommy, mommy.

she would not answer because she was writing, you know, that kind of thing. but but don't i don't want to paint her as completely a terrible mother, because there also were amazing things. and she she allowed them to kind of be themselves, be their own in this way. that was not fashion then at all. and i think they of them reflects that now. and did she have a good relationship them when they grew up in her later years later mean it was you know to you know it's difficult i mean because in the early years it was so temper you know and she they would eat lot of tea. they had a lot of tv dinners, that kind of thing. tv dinners and taxi. like a great thing for kids. i would have loved that. okay. and one of them is a very successful. right. and yes, doctor, one is a macarthur genius grant award physicist. one is engineer and architect

and another is a doctor. so they're all very successful, all have their own children. yeah. and did they cooperate with you on this biography? i interviewed all of them. so they did. i mean, i think have their own, you know, like the children of many well-known people. they have their own ideas about what should be told and what should not be told. you know, do they help you in your thinking about or some what? i mean, it got to a point where i knew more than they did. do you know what i mean? because i'm not trying to be arrogant or anything, but just their knowledge is circumscribed. the fact that they were her children and that was always, you know, that's just at the forefront. have they read the book yet? i don't know. i don't know. it'll be interesting to know if you've changed their view of their mother. indeed. and so much has happen. and recently. yes, there have been.

yes, there've been so many setbacks to the romance and what we've think shame. i don't know when she was you know at the end of life she was you know she was she was upset at the of her life because there was so much work to done and she knew it. and there had been you know, she died in 2006. and so there had been big setbacks in nineties, like during the bush and years. and she was very upset about that. so i cannot but feel that she would be upset now and not a day goes by these days where don't read something that is know like i just read about, you know, five female professors vassar college for gender discrimination or you know, there's the report about how we're not going to have equality gender by 2030 or there's, you know, not a day goes by where i don't read something that is just proves we have not done it.

we have failed. did she continue writing until the end of her life? yes. yes. what was the nature of, her writing towards the end of her life? at the end of her life? well, so she, well. so in the seventies she wrote a collection called it changed my life, which a lot of people didn't like because they felt that had hogged credit for the women's. and then she something called 1982 she wrote something called the second stay which which is about how the women's movement to become humanism again. she thought that the women's movement as was was too radical. she she wanted it to partner with men she wanted you know she wanted it to be more economically and so on people did not like that book. it got a pen in the new york times book review was just widely denounced. people called her a neo con and stuff and then then she wrote a

book, a big book in 1993 about aging. and she she wanted that book to be a parody game changer, like the feminine mystique. i don't think it will. i have very mixed feelings about that book. it's really gigantic, for one thing. and another. it has some amazing things in it. like it points out that one of the things that's really changed is, people living longer and that changes the gender dynamic. like she was very on that. and there are certain sections of the book where she talks about people having third acts in their lives if they live long enough and if they're good health. the book didn't i it was okay a not tremendously like celebrated or endorsed and there are a number of reasons for that. i mean one is she had accumulate and all of this baggage herself so it would be impossible a

known quantity that to have a two you know a second big success but also that time by 1993, she herself was not in good health, had a number of different health. and she, as that book was coming out. it was ironic this book on aging and how you could have a third act and all that and she was really struggling she had had like valve replacement heart valve replacement did she softened her views on gay and lesbian radical feminists at all. no. i mean, in 70, 1977, she apologized the phrase the lavender menace. but i think until the end of her life. i don't i think she believed that identity politics was not the way to go for women and that there should kind of this more economic based feminism that that that would be the the the

correct thing to do. so i don't i don't know about softening it. i do know people who, you know, who knew her or had had to deal with her after the open surgery, the valve replacement did say that she was nicer after the valve service or surgery. i think she got i forgot she had two valve replacements actually didn't just have one and one i think was a teenage boy. so after that according to some people she changed her personality quite a became interested and i don't think video games i don't know she she issues she i don't know nicer some some people that did say that to me are there are there young feminist today who do celebrate her and embrace her and her brand of feminism. i you know i have been writing i have a few people who who are reading the book, the feminine,

for one reason or another, who are very excited about it. they tend to not be in the academy. they're journalist or just ordinary people. and and so, yes i think people read the feminine mystique and they get excited by the language that's the strength of the book and stuff like that but it's i don't feel like it's a i know if it's a widespread movement. well, the feminine mystique, it's been a long time since i've read it, but it's seemed to me very welcoming and very inviting. it is. and that is very different from betty's personality. yeah yes. yes. she she kind of indicts in the feminine mystique. she talks about how she was, in part to blame for some of the things that happened, because she as a journalist, she, you know, done what editors wanted to narrow some of her stories so that they would just appeal to housewives, that kind of thing.

so she puts herself right at the center of it and that strategy makes very inviting interesting. well, we'd love to hear we'd love hear your questions i'm sure rachel would be eager to answer any questions you have. yeah. i'm old to have seen the term and feminist evolve where do you it is today. are people using you know i mean obviously there's a movement and there's things but the term itself the word, the phrase feminism, i don't i think it's mixed honestly. i think i'm not i'm not sure feel like sometimes i feel like that phrase is in, you know, people don't want be characterized as feminists. and then other times i feel like

there are feminists and. they are talking about feminism. but i don't feel like it's strong the way i read about betty and the and seventies and what that was like. i don't feel like it's like that. yeah. i don't know if they still think of you know those you know the bra men hating you know and it's like i've you know considered one since yeah the late seventies when i really you know yeah i've never you know but yeah i've seen that. yeah it's like, no, i'm all for this but i'm not using that term. yeah. yeah, yeah. betty never burned her bra and she actually got very upset. anyone would would you would talk about that and she loved men also was very could be very quite flirtatious. and and wanted men to be part of the the women's movement but not feminist as you're pointing out there were many radical feminist who were either separatists or other things i think. yeah yeah, other questions.

other questions. stepped to the microphone. thank you. wonderful discussion could. you say something about her as a writer and the style of her polemic and you know what what propelled her as a writer were her in clicked with and maybe in that this be out of left field but you know there's a kind of growing literature about the you know disaffection anomie in an american at the time there's gentleman agreement there's revolutionary road you know and yet taking on suburbia. oh yeah okay yes she was. you mean in the 1950s as a there in general, not just for women, that there was this general idea that the suburbs was this deadening place and we had to escape to to to be individuals. she was she was influenced by a

lot of those. she was very by hiroshima also. the that that book. and she wanted she actually wanted the feminine mystique to be hiroshima. she wanted it to be very i don't know granular account of how women were suffering because because this existential problem that was her that was her one of her models i mean the feminine mystique is a is a strange because it has that side it of the critique of suburbia but then it also has a more memoir ish and kind of side of it and sometimes those choose sides seem in opposition. yeah great question. one more question with no.

we need to be done. we need to be done. i'm sorry. oh, we're we're we've run out of time. rachel would be delighted to. sign your book. i would. they're for sale outside on the table out there and she'll be at the table right there to sign for you. julia, thank you so much. yes. thank you for making