Simone de Beauvoir And The Second Sex

This introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's life and work focuses on her most famous book, ›The Second Sex‹. Written in 1949, it deals with the situation of women in the western world and revolutionised the outlook and lives of many women. Highly provocative for the time, she claimed that a woman is not born but made. De Beauvoir rejected neither love nor family. What she advocated was that people should not be constrained in a position from which they cannot extricate themselves solely on the basis of their gender.

Her universal claim: equality before the law and freedom for the individual are the foundation of human dignity for all.