Friedan Project - Study Questions – Chapters 7, 8, 9

Overview:

  • The Reading Logs are due on November 30.
  • Select one or two questions from each chapter (Chapter 7 – 9). It is recommended that you select the study questions that directly relate to the exam topic that you will likely write on.  

·         There are three topics for the final essay.  Select the one that interests you most.

·         The topics are included in this handout.

·

Chapter 7: The Unfinished Revolution

  1. What are the demands of NOW’s Bill of Rights for Women (see Appendix B)? Why were the demands that women have access to legal abortion and the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment considered the “most revolutionary” demands in the late 1960s? Are these demands still considered revolutionary today?

  2. The Women’s Strike for Equality is a high point of the women’s movement and its success is directly attributed to Friedan.  Select one or two examples that illustrate how she made this event successful.

  3. How did Friedan, as president, assure the success of NOW in its early and most fragile years?  Identify and describe two or three examples that are discussion in the final pages of Chapter 7.

Chapter 8: Transcending Polarities

  1. Evaluate the ways that Friedan lobbied for a woman's’ right to a legal abortion from 1968 to 1973.  In her comments at the first meeting of NARAL, how did she connect a woman’s right to choose and a person’s inalienable right to personal liberty?  How did Roe v. Wade immediately affect the lives of women?

  2. Much to Friedan’s credit, the U.S. Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, and by 1973, 30 states had ratified it.  Yet the ERA had significant opposition from Phyllis Schlafly.  Evaluate the assumptions and actions of Schlafly about women’s rights and women’s role in American society.  Why did Schlafly oppose feminism?  Who were her supporters?  What were the points made by Schlafly in her attacks on NOW?

Chapter 9: New Feminist Frontiers

  1. In The Second Stage, Friedan presents the family as the “new feminist frontier.”  What are her assumptions and her argument?  How is Friedan’s of a “new feminist frontier” consistent with her assumptions and solution in The Feminine Mystique, Now’s Statement of Purpose, and the Women’s Bill of Rights?

  2. Friedan continued to pursue her interest in the family as the new feminist frontier at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and in The New Paradigm Project.  In what ways does each of these projects correspond to her previous writings and her feminist ideas?  How relevant are the issues discussed within each of these project today?

Exam Topics

Select the one that most interests you.  You can also propose an alternative topic, but it must be cleared by me.

1.      Evaluate the ways that Friedan’s personal experiences shaped her feminism and public actions. 

 

This topic requires that you make connections between specific experiences of Friedan’s life as a child, adolescent and young adult (Chapters 1-4) with her actions as a feminist and political activist (Chapters 5 – 9).  Therefore, you must select specific actions that Friedan took beginning with the publication of The Feminine Mystique and ending with her work on the ERA, aging, and The Paradigm Project. To begin, you should select three specific examples from the first four chapters that shaped Friedan’s perspective.  One example might be her interaction with her parents; another might be her experiences as a labor journalist.  Then you need to think about Friedan’s approach to women’s rights:  how might her interaction with her parents shaped her approach to women’s equality and equity?  And what was the specific action she took, e.g. a founder of NOW. 

 

 

2.      Write an analysis that defends or challenges the belief that Betty Friedan’s most noteworthy contribution to second wave feminism was The Feminine Mystique.

 

You can take two approaches to this topic.  If you decide to defend the belief that Friedan’s most noteworthy contribution was The Feminine Mystique, you will need to not only tell about the power and impact of the book but also explain why the book is a more significant contribution second-wave feminism than the co-founding of NOW, the writing of the Bill of Rights for Women, co-founding the National Women’s Political Caucus, lobbying for a women’s right for a legal abortion and the ERA, organizing the March for Equality, etc.  (Pick two or three relevant examples from this list.) In making that argument, you need not detail Friedan’s contributions after the publication of TFM in 1963 --- but you will need to justify how the assumptions, conclusions and recommendations in that book were more instrumental to the momentum and impact of second-wave feminism than her actions after its publication.  The relevant chapters for this essay are Chapters 5 – 9.

 

The second approach is to argue that TFM was not Friedan’s most noteworthy contribution.  An essay with that perspective will need to refer to the ideas in TFM and demonstrate that her perspective in the book were instrumental in her actions after its publication. Actions you might consider are co-founding of NOW, the writing of the Bill of Rights for Women, co-founding the National Women’s Political Caucus, lobbying for a women’s right for a legal abortion and the ERA, organizing the March for Equality, etc.  In this approach, you need to select at least two examples of her continued activism from 1963 – 2000.  A well – argued essay would evaluate the consistency of her ideas in the examples as well as the expansion of her ideas beyond TFM.

 

 

3.      What is the relevance of Betty Friedan’s ideas today?  In this essay consider one or more of the following: (1) political solution to social issues; (2) the family as the new feminist frontier; (3) attitudes toward Friedan by those affiliated with third wave feminism; (4) relevance of Friedan’s ideas to women of color.

 

In this essay, you will need to evaluate two to three key ideas or actions of Friedan and then how these still have meaning today.  You can select from all three categories, or you can write an essay that has an analysis of two to three actions be Friedan in one of the three categories. The relevant chapters for this essay are Chapters 5 – 9.