Betty Friedan (1921-2006) is hailed by historians as a seminal figure in the 'Second Wave' of
the women's feminist movement. In 1957 Friedan wrote a questionnaire for her former classmates
at a reunion at the all-female Smith College. The results revealed that many women shared the
same frustrations as her in their roles as housewives and mothers. Friedan's findings provided
a clear-eyed analysis of the issues that affected women's lives in the decades after the Second
World War and became the basis to her book The Feminine Mystique. A sensation on publication
selling over 3 million copies it established Friedan as one of the chief architects of the
women's liberation movement. A novelist and journalist Lionel Shriver was born in North
Carolina and educated at Columbia University in New York. Her eight published novels include
New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and international bestseller We Need to Talk
About Kevin for which she won the Orange Prize in 2005. Her ninth novel So Much for That will
be published in 2010. She writes regularly for the Guardian the Times and The Daily Telegraph
and has published features reviews and columns in the New York Times the Wall Street
Journal the Financial Times and the Economist among many other publications. She lives in
London.
