Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
The Second Sex
Summary
The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women in the present society as well as throughout all of history. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949. She published the work in two volumes: Facts and Myths, and Lived Experience. Some chapters first appeared in the journal Les Temps modernes.
One of Beauvoir's best-known and controversial books (banned by the Vatican), The Second Sex is regarded as a groundbreaking work of feminist philosophy, and as the starting inspiration point of second-wave feminism.
Beauvoir asks, "What is woman?" She argues that man is considered the default, while woman is considered the "Other": "Thus, humanity is male, and man defines woman not herself, but as relative to him." Beauvoir describes the relationship of ovum to sperm in various creatures (fish, insects, mammals), leading up to the human being. She describes women's subordination to the species in terms of reproduction, compares the physiology of men and women, concluding that values cannot be based on physiology and that the facts of biology must be viewed in light of the ontological, economic, social, and physiological context.
Authors whose views Beauvoir rejects include Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, and Friedrich Engels. Beauvoir argues that while Engels, in his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), maintained that "the great historical defeat of the female sex" is the result of the invention of bronze and the emergence of private property, his claims are unsupported.
According to Beauvoir, two factors explain the evolution of women's condition: participation in production, and freedom from reproductive slavery. Beauvoir writes that motherhood left woman "riveted to her body", like an animal, and made it possible for men to dominate her and Nature.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.