A Conversation with Rachel Shteir, Author Most Recently of Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter

"What I find people don't know about Betty and/or forget...is the enormous burden she shouldered by lifting up women as a category."

Beginning April 15, I’ll be teaching a 6-week online flash fiction workshop for Stanford Continuing Studies. Still a few spaces left—more information here.

Submission info: New England Review is open for submissions until May 1 (their submission periods are 3/1-5/1 and 9/1-11/1).

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One of the cultural (and urban) critiques I think about most often is a book review Rachel Shteir wrote for the New York Times in 2013. In her appraisal of three nonfiction books that each focused on Chicago, she wrote with laudable candor about some of the less decorous aspects of the city, and as someone who at that point had spent most of my life living in or near Chicago, I remember thinking, Yeeesss.

There was quite a vituperative response from other corners, however, and numerous disgruntled letters to the NYT editors were published soon after. Rachel defended her essay in many quarters, and at the time, I remember thinking, a) Why can’t she say what she thinks? and b) It’s not like any of this isn’t true.

When I met Rachel a few years later through our mutual friend Gioia Diliberto (whose Bookish interview about her most recent novel Coco at the Ritz can be found here), by then she was probably more than a little weary of discussing the response to her April 2013 NYTBR piece, but she was gracious when I brought up how much I loved it, and I’ve since gone on to read and admire more of her work.

Along with her most recent book, Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter (published last September by Yale University Press), which was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography, Rachel is the author of three other award-winning books, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show; Gypsy: The Art of the Tease, and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting.

Before reading Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter, all I knew was that Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique, the book that galvanized the women’s movement. Among many of the facts I learned from Rachel’s biography are that Friedan grew up in Peoria, Illinois, attended Smith College, which she entered in the late 1930s, and by all accounts, was a brilliant student there.

She moved to New York City after graduation and worked as a journalist and magazine writer, eventually marrying and having three children. She never stopped writing and organizing for the women’s movement until she died on February 4, 2006, her 85th birthday.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Betty Friedan from your local bookseller soon—it’s a magnificent biography of a woman who, in spite of the controversies she often found herself embroiled in, deserves much respect and admiration.

Christine/Bookish: Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter was published by Yale University Press as part of their Jewish Lives series. How did you come to sign up for the project? I'm guessing one of the editors approached you - is this accurate?

Rachel Shteir: In 2013, on the fiftieth anniversary of The Feminine Mystique, I wrote an essay comparing it with other books by younger feminists. At the time I had never read the book and I was stunned by its power.

I was also irritated that it received little credit for its ideas in the other new books I was writing about even when those books borrowed from her. That was the piece I wrote and people liked it. A little while after that, I was asked to write the biography.

CS: I had no idea Betty Friedan was one of the founders of NARAL (National Association to Repeal Abortion Laws) as well as NOW (National Organization of Women). What do you view as her most enduring legacy? 

RS: Her most important achievements are writing The Feminine Mystique and founding the National Organization for Women. But Betty (I refer to her as Betty because I spent 6 years working on her biography) founded many organizations, including NARAL, the National Women's Political Caucus, and others. She was a kind of genius at galvanizing.

CS: Friedan was a famously polarizing figure - having, from what I could tell, as many detractors as champions. One point of contention was that many women who were homemakers felt belittled because Friedan didn't think homemaking was as fulfilling (or as important) as work outside of the home. She had three children, however, and didn't disparage motherhood. Is this issue, in your view, the crux of why she isn't, say, as celebrated as Gloria Steinem appears to be? 

RS: There are many reasons why Betty is not as celebrated as Gloria. One is what you suggest above. Another is that Gloria was on the side of younger women who supported identity politics, then called sexual politics, specifically lesbians' attempt to come out of the closet and be part of the feminist movement.

Betty did not want what went on in the bedroom to be a central part of the platform of the women's movement. She worried that it would alienate mainstream Americans. Another is that Betty was not always great at forging relationships with younger women. Yes, she had some women she mentored, some she adored. But she could also scold third wave feminists. And finally I have to mention media. Gloria was a media darling and Betty was not.

Rachel Shteir

CS: I know Friedan also had mixed feelings about lesbians in the women's movement, which didn't endear her to this population or their supporters. She did try to be inclusive of BIPOC women, however; was she given much credit for this push for inclusivity?  

RS: She is not given credit for much of anything these days, sadly. And with BIPOC women, too, she didn't support all of them because she was fearful that those who were radical would alienate mainstream America and damage the women's movement. She did support liberal BIPOC women of course.

But what I find people don't know about Betty and/or forget about that time—the late 1950s to the late 1960s—is the enormous burden she shouldered by lifting up women as a category. That was her real accomplishment, to make the subject of women a credible subject worthy of study, discussion, investigation, like Viet Nam or Civil Rights. She was championed for doing so but also ridiculed.

CS: Understandably, Friedan was very concerned with fascism and the possibility of its infiltration of American politics. What do you think she'd advise those of us to do today who are also very concerned about it?

RS: I think she would say to keep fighting. 

CS: What are you working on now? 

RS: I'm working on several different projects. I'll have an announcement to make about that soon!

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Rachel Shteir is the author of three previous books, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show; Gypsy: The Art of the Tease, and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting. Striptease won the George Freedley Award and Gypsy was a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick. Betty Friedan was a New Yorker Best Book of 2023 and a finalist for the NBCC Award for biography. Rachel has written many essays and reviews for newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She teaches at the Theatre School at DePaul University.