" She did so not by giving the history of women's oppression, but by telling her own story. She wrote about the opportunities that were presented to her after college and how she refused them because she wanted to start a family. Wolfe (1999), also stated that Friedan's work did not go without academic merit. She involved the work of some outstanding scholars in her book in order to give it some credibility. Although she was on the frontier of a revolution, she realized that she was not the first feminist, and this became apparent with the criticism that followed the publication of her first book.
Many radical feminists saw Friedan's views as boring and repetitive. There were women fighting for equal rights long before 1963 and some of them were of the opinion that what Friedan had written was outdated. Friedan also received criticism from women who felt belittled and threatened by her work. According to a critic of The Feminine Mystique, Sylvia Fava (1963), "Friedan tended to set up a counter-mystique; that all women must have creative interests outside of the home to realize themselves. This can be just as confining as any other mold" (Fava, 1963, p.1053). Women like Fava felt pressured by Friedan to go out and achieve things that they were not accustomed to achieving. Some women were content with their docile, housewife lives and felt that Friedan was telling them that their lives were not good enough for womankind. It was six years after the writing of her first book, however, that Friedan began to receive the most criticism. This disparagement had to do not only with her writing, but also with her personal life and her vivacious temper.
In 1966, Friedan was at the forefront of creating the National Organization of Women (NOW). NOW spawned the development of many smaller, more private women's groups around the country. Friedan's leadership in the organization came under much scrutiny, especially when her personal life began to fall apart.