The Second Sex

Main ideas

• Woman constructed as ‘Other’ within a male-defined world.
• Freedom as always situated in body and history.

Important themes

Reading context

Published in 1949, the first sustained philosophical account of women's situation, built from history, biology, myth and interviews as much as from argument. Its claim that one is not born but becomes a woman set the terms for later feminist thought.

How to approach it

The introduction states the thesis. Volume 2, on lived experience, is the part most read today. It is long, so take it a chapter at a time.