World reknown as a leader of the women's movement, Friedan was encouraged by her mother to become a journalist. She wrote for a workers newspaper, covering strikes and labor disputes, and learned about discrimination against women in the workplace.   Friedan completed the seminal work, "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963, drawing upon her life and those of her friends to describe the sense of dissatisfaction they experiences as housewives. The book sold three million copies in three years, starting a revolution for women's rights in the home and workplace. Friedan went on to found the National Organization for Women (NOW), which enacted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination on the base of race or sex.  In 1993, she published "The Fountain of Youth" which criticized society's equation of aging as loss and depletion, and advocated new positive roles for older citizens.

QUOTE:
"In this country we need a values revolution. We have no values other than material property. And who is going to define that? How's it going to happen? Age has been studied so much and only really in terms of deficit and decline. Are there any positive attributes of growth that continue or happen after 50, 60,70? We don't know. If we only use the measuring stick based on youth, maybe not, but then don't we need another measuring stick?"