Betty Friedan
Feminist author of The Feminine Mystique (1963); at the 1986 PEN Congress she led the protest over the underrepresentation of women on the conference panels, a charge directed largely at Mailer as organizer.
Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963) and a founder of the modern American women’s movement, led the women writers’ caucus at the 48th International PEN Congress in January 1986 that protested the scarcity of women on the conference’s panels — only a handful among scores of speakers (86.10, 86.11). The protest, directed at Mailer as organizer, ran alongside the Shultz controversy and became one of the two defining disputes of the Congress; Mailer’s later defense (that the panels were chosen by standing committees, “six of eight headed by women”) did not quiet it (86.15).
Stub created during the 1986 ingest.