wbur.org
support wbur today!
Listen to this show
Betty Friedan and the Women’s Movement in America
photo

By host Tom Ashbrook:

On the front of eulogizing retrospection, it’s been the week of Coretta Scott King, and rightly so. But there’s another woman — another super woman — who died last Saturday having changed the world.

Feminist Betty Friedan blew the doors off the lives of quiet desperation of American women of the 1950s. Her earth-shaking book “The Feminine Mystique” pulled the trigger on history, said Alvin Toefler, and sent a generation of women storming out of the kitchen and into the political and economic fray.

Now, a new generation of women is picking and choosing from the feminist revolution.

Hear a conversation with women, across generations, on the legacy of Betty Friedan.

Guests:

Caryl Rivers, professor of journalism, Boston University and author of “Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, And Our Jobs” with Rosalind Barnett. Her forthcoming book is “Monsters, Mommies and Madonnas” about the representation of women in the media.

Megan Greer, a 23-year-old first-year law student at Harvard Law School and a member of the Alliance of Independent Feminists, a campus organization of moderate, conservative and libertarian women.

Masum Momaya, 28-year-old doctoral student in the Harvard School of Education. She is on the board of the Third Wave Foundation, an organization that supports young women and transgender activism.

 
 

Comments are closed.

On Point Today
Hour 2
Robots Among Us
Thursday, July 9, 2009 image

Robots among us. iRobot CEO Colin Angle on the business and science of robotics now.

Comments [37]
 
Hour 1
Stimulus, Part Two?
Thursday, July 9, 2009 image

Debate mounts over a “Stimulus II.” But with talk of a “fiscal train wreck,” can America afford to spend more on stimulus? Top Obama advisor Christina Romer weighs in.

Comments [46]

Recent Shows
U.S. Nuns and the Vatican
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 image

The Catholic Church in Rome moves to scrutinize — maybe rein in — American nuns. We’ll talk with sisters on the front lines.

Comments [43]
 
Trouble in Honduras
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 image

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya comes to Washington for help. We’ll ask what the coup against him means for Honduras, and for democracy in Latin America.

Comments [48]
On Point Blog
Christina Romer on the Stimulus

Christina Romer, chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, joined us in our first hour today to talk about the economy and the debate over whether a second round of stimulus is needed. Asked about Vice President Biden’s recent remarks, that the administration had “misread how bad the economy was,” she replied:  “It’s important to realize [...]

More »
 
Ten Minutes with Brzezinski

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski joined Tom from Washington, D.C. this morning and shared his impressions of President Obama’s first face-to-face meetings with Russia’s leaders.  Brzezinski called it a “sober and realistic summit, one which didn’t create undue expectations, but one which also marked some real progress…. There was, in a sense, an unstated agreement to disagree, and that’s [...]

More » | Comments [1]
 
India, China and the Climate

The passage of the House climate bill – discussed in our first hour today – has been greeted with enthusiasm in many quarters. But in some ways, the real question is whether a global framework can be established in Copenhagen in December, when countries will negotiate a new international treaty to curb greenhouse gases. After all, America emits only [...]

More » | Comments [1]