Lest we forget

Betty Friedan died this week. Her book The Feminine Mystique was the first shot in what became a long feminist battle to assert the right of women to seek fulfillment in their own lives, and not only through their husbands and children. I quite enjoyed the AP story in Sunday's paper (which noted, among other things, that her signature work had arisen out of a survey that she made at her college class reunion). But perhaps even more on point, in this era when feminism is being portrayed as a dirty word and an extremist outlook, is this list of things we take for granted but which wouldn't have been possible without the beliefs, efforts, and sacrifices of countless feminists in the latter decades of the 20th century. Remembering how far we've come is the least we owe Betty and her sisters; if you look a little harder, you'll realize that there's still plenty of work to be done.