why should we care about betty friedan today? >> as you enumerated in your introduction that he wrote "the feminine mystique" which is one of the most important feminist books of the 20th century if not the most important one.as "the feminine mystique" was as you noted a huge, huge bestseller but what it did was it established women as a category which at the time simply did not exist. you could say that betty threw the first shot which many other people then picked up so that's number one "the feminine mystique" and theme n number two the national organization for women as i said this was an amazing organization, nothing like it existed in the goal was to again to unite women as a category and have women be able to agitate for a quality of pay, equality of representation and other things like that. also betty went on for the rest of her life to sound many other organizationsd 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

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 organiza