Martha Weinman Lear's article "The Second Feminist Wave," which appeared in TheNew York Times Magazine on March 10, 1968, included explanations from Betty Friedan about feminism and the still new National Organization for Women.
Betty Friedan was already famous for her bestselling 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.
In 1968, Martha Weinman Lear quoted Betty Friedan in "The Second Feminist Wave" about several different subjects.
"Aunt Toms"
Betty Friedan criticized the years of self-denigration by women who tended to say, "Don't get me wrong; I'm not a feminist, but..." She called them "Aunt Toms" who thought there were three kinds of women: "men, women and themselves." The phrase "Aunt Tom" was an allusion to the important 19th-century novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
As an example, Betty Friedan cited her experience on a television show. The female host had worked "ruthlessly" for her success but nevertheless said to her studio audience that a byline was not nearly as valuable as being at home washing the dishes and caring for loved ones.
Girls…er, Women in the Workplace
"The Second Feminist Wave" also reported a conversation between Betty Friedan and the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She had complained to the EEOC chairman about women being hired for only menial jobs.
He replied that he was "interviewing girls right now for important jobs," and she told him that she certainly hoped he was hiring women. It was like calling a 50-year-old black man "boy," according to Betty Friedan.
Conclusions
Martha Weinman Lear concluded "The Second Feminist Wave" with an extensive quote from Betty Friedan about questions the article had raised regarding marriage, family and children. Perhaps society was asking too much of marriage, Betty Friedan suggested, while stressing that she did not know whether the concepts of marriage and the nuclear family should or would be philosophically questioned and ultimately rejected.
The last paragraph of Martha Weinman Lear's article belonged to Betty Friedan's words:
"What I do know is this: If you agree that women are human beings who should be realizing their potential, then no girl child born today should responsibly be brought up to be a housewife. Too much has been made of defining human personality and destiny in terms of the sex organs. After all, we share the human brain."
-- Final paragraph of the "The Second Feminist Wave," New York Times Magazine, March 10, 1968
The Martha Weinman Lear article is often remembered as one of the important early pieces about the 1960s feminist movement that reached a wide audience and analyzed the importance of the resurgence of feminism.