Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan (born 1921) was a women's rights activist, author of "The Feminine Mystique", and a founding member of the National Organization for Women, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the National Women's Political Caucus. Friedan held a leading role throughout the Feminist movement and continues to inspire and hold reverence with the women of America. She started out, as I will describe later, with literature to inspire a feeling within women and used leadership roles in many women’s rights organizations to make a difference in the movement. She delegated for success and focused on the development of not only herself and the feminist movement, but the women it concerned. Leadership characteristics of Friedan would include authenticity, a desire to empower others, a refuse to compromise and purposeful nature. Betty Friedan appeared suddenly in the national limelight with the publication of her first book, The Feminine Mystique, in 1963. It became a national best seller and propelled Friedan to a leadership position in the burgeoning movement for women's liberation. In that book Friedan identified a condition she claimed women suffered as the result of a widely accepted ideology that placed them first and foremost in the home. Attacking the notion that "biology is destiny," which ordained that women should devote their lives to being wives and mothers at the expense of other pursuits, Friedan called upon women to shed their domestic confines and discover other meaningful endeavors. Friedan was herself well situated to know the effects of the "feminine mystique.