When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
Betty FriedanRead
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the potential of women to thrive when they have the freedom to express their true selves.
Betty Friedan's quote questions the possibilities and capabilities of women when they are liberated from societal constraints and allowed to embrace their authentic identities. It suggests that true freedom enables women to explore their full potentials and achieve greatness beyond traditional roles.
Themes
WomenFreedomIdentityPotentialSelfLiberation
In practice
Example use cases
During a women's empowerment seminar, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-discovery.
More from Betty Friedan
All quotes βOver and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.
Betty FriedanRead
Advice? I don't offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
Betty FriedanRead
We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
Betty FriedanRead
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
Betty FriedanRead
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
Betty FriedanRead
Similar quotes
She's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.
Kate ChopinRead
There were not a lot of women in the theater department - it was really run by men, and so the message was that women can be onstage, but women can't really be backstage.
Lynn NottageRead
For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.
Sheryl SandbergRead
I get worried for young girls sometimes; I want them to feel that they can be sassy and full and weird and geeky and smart and independent, and not so withered and shriveled.
Amy PoehlerRead
Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.
Ruth Bader GinsburgRead
Perhaps there is no greater issue facing contemporary women than the choices they must make about balancing home and work.
Camille PagliaRead