The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 philosophical study argues that women's subordination is not biological destiny but a social and historical construction — the book's founding claim that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

Published in French as Le Deuxième Sexe in two volumes, the first, Facts and Myths, traces how philosophy, religion, economics and myth have cast woman as society's "Other" against a male default; the second, Lived Experience, follows a woman's life from childhood through old age — covering socialization, sexuality, marriage, motherhood and work — to show how women come to internalize that subordinate role.

Drawing on history, biology, psychoanalysis and literature, and arguing against Freud and Engels along the way, it became one of the founding texts of modern feminist theory. The original 1953 English translation by H. M. Parshley cut and altered large sections of the text; a complete, unabridged translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier appeared in 2009.