Betty Friedan, Mother of Feminism

Hailey Doyle and Kristin Muench

Junior Division
Group Website
Student Composed Words- 1,163
Words in Process Paper- 495
 Being a woman in todays society can be hard at times. When we were choosing our
topic, we were both eager to learn more about a women who had done things to improve the
equality of men and women. After briefly learning about several other women who worked
towards equality, we decided that Betty Friedan was the most inspiring to us because of how
strong her opinion was and began learning more about her.

To begin our research process, we added sources to Pearltrees, a data and thought
collecting website that our history teacher showed us. After collecting several primary and
secondary sources from newspapers, search engines, our local library, and the online database
Badgerlink, we started reading them to learn more about Betty Friedan. We also analyzed many
photos and watched several videos and interviews that we found. In search of learning more
about Betty Friedan, we tried contacting one of her family members, but were not successful. Of
the sources that we found, the interviews were the most helpful to us because they helped us
understand what Betty Friedans opinion on feminism was and what changes she hoped to make.
Watching or reading interviews was also very eye opening on how womens rights have changed
over time.

Starting our project was quite simple. We instantly knew we wanted to create a website
because we are both good with technology and wanted to try something different than the classic
tri-fold board that most of our classmates chose to do. We use Weebly in History class, so
website creation was familiar to us. One of the advantages to creating a website was that we
could personalize it to our liking, but could also change it as many times as we wanted. One of
the most challenging part of creating our website was figuring out how to set up the different
pages to make them easiest to navigate. Throughout the process of creating our National History
Day website, we both learned about several new features that Weebly had to offer, and both
became more knowledgeable about technology and website creation.

In 1957, Betty Friedan began to observe the lives of American women and found that
many were limited to domesticated roles within society. This inspired her to write the book The
Feminine Mystique. Despite its heavy criticism, Betty Friedan continued to be persistent in her
work and impacted society by co-founding the National Organization for Women, helping to
organize the Womens Strike for Equality, and becoming the director of the First Womens Bank
and Trust Company. Betty Friedan took a stand in history by fighting for equality between men
and women throughout the twentieth century. She spent much of her life fighting for the equality
between men and women and if it were not for her, we believe that people living in the United
States would still live unequally and many women would not be offered the education and career
opportunities that they are offered today.