During my women's rights activism in the '70s I read that earthshaking volume The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.

Never before had so many women realized that the voices in their heads, lodged there by years of conditioning to live as helpmates and supporters of the men who run the world, were not telling it like it really was. I was one who experienced the "click" of realization that I could be anything I wanted to be.

Now Friedan is gone, leaving behind a heritage of women's rights expectations ignited in every woman who was forever changed by her message. I really identify with Friedan who lived to be my age and who was grounded in psychology as I was in my work as an elementary school counselor. She helped found the National Organization for Women, a group that I headed in this state after its founding here.

Women who were threatened by her message declared that the movement that she pioneered was out to criticize women who were housewives. The media often pictured feminists as blatant man haters. Young women of today who find out that I have been a women's movement activist ask me about my feminist stand. They have been convinced that feminism is harmful, creating a world of aggressive women who do not want to be thought of as mothers and caretakers. I come back with, "A feminist is anyone who believes that women are people." Who could quarrel with that?

Too much is made of the expectation of women as stay-at-home mothers when fathers are never held to a standard of being with their own children enough to share in parenting. We haven't often heard in the media about fathers who neglect their children by working out of the home. Certainly children need as many caring people in their lives as they can have and they certainly deserve fathering as much as mothering. They deserve grandparenting as well but in our segregated society young families are often left isolated from older caring people.

In cities, commuting is the norm. Fathers and now many mothers are not provided with the work schedules or child care arrangements that are necessary to help parents relax about their children while they are at work. Now that corporations are being expected to provide health care for their workers, I believe that corporations also need to provide space for childcare. The United States is lagging among industrial nations in providing needed social services.

If Betty Friedan were to live on, she would be out there pushing for the social services that the so-called liberated woman needs in order to gain full equality in the world.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a writer and speaker and can be reached at gnkunkel@comcast.net