Betty Friedan, a founder of the modern feminist movement in the US, died on Saturday of congestive heart failure, feminist leaders announced. She was 85.
Friedan achieved prominence in 1963 with the publication of her book The Feminine Mystique, which detailed the lives of women who were expected to find fulfillment through the achievements of their husbands and children.
The book sparked a movement for a re-evaluation of women's role in US society and is widely credited with laying the foundation of modern feminism.
PHOTO: AP
She was a founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and a leading advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment to the US constitution banning sex-based discrimination, women's rights activists said.
"The movement that Friedan's energy sparked continues to grow, and is bigger today than she could ever have dreamed when she helped launch it in the 1960s," Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and a former president of the National Organization for Women, said in a statement.
Born Betty Naomi Goldstein on Feb, 4, 1921, in Peoria, Illinois, Friedan graduated in 1942 from Smith College with a degree in psychology. After moving to New York City she worked at various jobs until marrying Carl Friedan.
Her own experiences as a suburban housewife and mother, and her personal dissatisfaction, shaped her freelance work for a number of magazines. That led her to work extensively in conducting interviews and questionnaires on women's personal struggles, leading up to her landmark 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.
In 1966 she co-founded NOW, and as NOW president she led campaigns to end sex-classified employment notices, for greater representation of women in government, for child-care centers for working mothers and for legalized abortion and other reforms.
Friedan also was a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS