Word: friedan
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According to Friedan, women are caught in a struggle between their rising financial expectations and a declining economy. "The emergence of women as a newly-productive force is one of the few active growth factors in the economy today," Friedan said. "Women can continue to share the economic burden, but there must be a real mobilization on their part to prevent a backlash...
...Friedan decries the "radical feminist rhetoric" which repudiates a woman's sexuality and right to motherhood. The mother of three, Friedan regards motherhood as an inherent and fulfilling part of womanhood...
...addition, she believes the "radical fringe" has been too willing to isolate women in their relationships to men and to society, and that it has wrongly applied the concepts of race-separatism and class warfare to its own situation. Extremist rhetoric, says Friedan, denies a woman's personhood and fails to affirm her full identity...
...present, however, this radical fringe is only a minor worry for Friedan. Of greater importance to her are the predictions of an imminent economic recession which will threaten the progress that women have made up to date...
Historically, a nation's social conscience declines proportionately to the state of the economy. "Women traditionally are last hired, first fired," Friedan said. If this proves true once again, women in the job market may find themselves without jobs or sources of economic support in the near future...