Betty Friedan

General Information:
Betty Naomi Friedan was born on 4th February in 1921, at Peoria, Illinois, USA, and died on 4th February in 2006 (at age 85), at Washington DC, USA. Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. She was an American writer, activist and feminist.
She married Carl Friedan, in 1947. Carl and Friedan had three children In one of her books (“Life so far”), she accused him of beating her.
Betty Friedan was a leading figure in the women’s movement in the United States of America.
“The truth is that I've always been a bad-tempered bitch. Some people say that I have mellowed some. I don't know....” – Betty Friedan

Early life:
As a young girl, Betty Friedan was active in both Marxist and Jewish circles; she later wrote how she felt isolated from the community at times, and felt her "passion against injustice". She attended Peoria High School, and became involved in the school newspaper. When her application to write a column was rejected, she and six other friends started a literary magazine called Tide, which discussed home life rather than school life.
She attended only female Smith College, in 1938. She won a scholarship prize in her first year for notable academic performance. In her second year she became interested in poetry, and had many poems published in campus publications. In 1941, she became editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. The editorials became more political under her leadership, taking a strong antiwar position and occasionally causing controversy. She graduated in 1942 with a major in psychology.
In 1943 she spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley on a partnership for graduate work in psychology with Erik Erikson. She became more politically active, continuing to mix with Marxists (many of her friends were investigated by the FBI).