A Woman Is Handicapped By Her Sex,

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.

What Had Really Caused The Women's Movement Was The Additional Years Of Human Life. At The Turn Of The Century Women's Life Expectancy Was Forty-six; Now It Was Nearly Eighty. Our Groping Sense That We Couldn't Live All Those Years In Terms Of Motherhood Alone Was "the Problem That Had No Name." Realizing That It Was Not Some Freakish Personal Fault But Our Common Problem As Women Had Enabled Us To Take The First Steps To Change Our Lives.

The Only Kind Of Work Which Permits An Able Woman To Realize Her Abilities Fully, To Achieve Identity In Society In A Life Plan That Can Encompass Marriage And Motherhood, Is The Kind That Was Forbidden By The Feminine Mystique, The Lifelong Commitment To An Art Or Science, To Politics Or Profession. If Divorce Has Increased By One Thousand Percent, Don't Blame The Women's Movement. Blame The Obsolete Sex Roles On Which Our Marriages Were Based.

I Won A Really Big Fellowship To Go Straight On To Get My Ph.d. And I Went Through Agonies Of Indecision, And Then I Decided Not To Accept It. I Just Decided I Didn't Want To Be An Academic.

This Idea That The Employment Of Women, The Movement Of Women Outside The Home Into The Work World, And Their Demand For Equality Is Somehow Responsible For Increasing Juvenile Delinquency Or The Increase In Divorce Rate, Is Just So Much Bullshit.