The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

When this book was first published in Paris in 1949 it was to outrage and scandal. Never before had the case for female liberty been so forcefully and successfully argued. Beauvoir’s belief that ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ switched on light bulbs in the heads of a generation of women and began a fight for greater equality and economic independence.

I read the abridged version of this book which contains three chapters of the 978-page original. On publication, The Second Sex was considered highly controversial and the reaction was polarised – it was swiftly banned by the Vatican whilst flying off the shelves in France.

The Second Sex is a deep dive into what it is to be a woman. The book was written after two world wars during which women had had to step into men’s jobs whilst they were away fighting the war, and had demonstrated that they were just as capable of those jobs as the men were. Why should they have had to step back from them when the men returned? Do men and women innately have different intellectual capabilities?

De Beauviour argues that women are not unequal to men, just different, so it was illogical that men were given far more opportunity to be successful than women were. Throughout the book – even the abridged version – she outlines numerous ways in which society holds women back in comparison to men. Although of course a huge amount has changed since The Second Sex was published in 1949 (French women had only been given the vote five years previously), some of de Beauvoir’s experiences are still sadly familiar.

The Second Sex is not an especially easy read as the content is often complex and abstract. However, it is a seminal piece of feminist literature and it inspired numerous future feminist writers to examine the philosophy of feminism and womanhood.