betty friedan

“ Why aren't girls forced to grow up - to achieve somehow the core of self that will end the unnecessary dilemma, the mistaken choice between femaleness and humanness that is implied in the feminine mystique? ”

“ In almost every professional field, in business and in the arts and sciences, women are still treated as second-class citizens. ”

“ It is not the strength of the mothers that is at fault but their weakness...that is mistaken for 'femininity'. ”

“ ...America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. ”

“ It is wrong to keep spelling out unnecessary choices that make women unconsciously resist either commitment or motherhood... ”

“ For over fifteen years, the words written for women, and the words women used when they talked to each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the room and talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems with their children, or how to keep their husbands happy, or improve their children's school, or cook chicken ”

“ The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive. ”

“ How can any woman see the whole truth within the ”

“ Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell. ”

“ Men are not the enemy, but a fellow victim. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves. ”