Simone de Beauvoir is one of the real titans of 20th century thought. A philosopher, writer, social critic and feminist activist, she was born in France in 1908 and achieved worldwide fame for her contribution to feminist theory and activism. During her life she published over twenty books, the most famous being her ground-breaking treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir turned the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into a feminist one: ‘You are not born a woman: you become one.’ This famous phrase perfectly articulated the distinction between biological sex and socially-constructed gender. The fundamental source of women’s oppression, she argued, is the way in which femininity has been defined and stereotyped. Aside from writing, Beauvoir was active in the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and fought for the legalisation of abortion.
Beauvoir died of pneumonia in 1986, but her legacy lives on in the work of feminist theorists around the world, from Monique Wittig and Juliet Mitchell to Donna Haraway and Judith Butler.
