The Library of Congress Women’s History Month Planning Committee presented a Conversation with Betty Friedan on March 10, 2005.

For more than four decades Betty Friedan has been a leading spokesperson for women’s rights. A 1942 Smith College graduate, Friedan became the voice of her generation when she explored the dissatisfaction of American housewives in the 1960s. The result was her controversial book “The Feminine Mystique,” which was published in 1963.

In 1966 Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women, a civil rights group dedicated to achieving equality of opportunity for women. Friedan served as the group’s president until 1970, during which time she led the campaign for ratification of a proposed Equal rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1971 she founded the National Women’s Political Caucus “to make policy not coffee.” In 1973 she became director of the First Women’s Bank and Trust Company. She currently co-chairs Women, Men and Media, a gender-based research organization that conducts research on gender and the media.

Friedan’s publications include “It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (1976); “The Second Stage” (1981), an assessment of the status of the women’s movement; and “The Fountain of Age” (1993), a critique on society’s negative view of aging.