Simone De Beauvoir Feminism Analysis

Between 1940 and 2000, the second wave of the social feminism movement shook the world. Australia and France were both leaders in initiating a radical change in the way the world saw feminism and women. Both countries had siginificant individuals who helped to raise the issues of feminism to a world level through their ideologies. Feminism is a social issue, and many individuals and groups of the second wave, sought to consolidate cultural and social ideologies before branching out to politics and law.

Feminism is an issue that will be continually fought for. Because of this, significant individuals and groups have been extremely instrumental in providing a grounded approach to dealing with new and conflicting forms of feminism. Simone de Beauvoir

was a prominent feminist theorist of France during the early to mid 20th century. De Beauvoir’s most famous publication was ‘Le Deuxième Sexe,’ (‘The Second Sex,’ 1949), which refers to feminism as a moral revolution. She stated that men had termed women as the ‘Other’ in a patriarchal society, and because of this had created a false, diminishing aura of the legitimacy of women. ‘The Second Sex’ provided strong groudwork for second-wave feminism. De Beauvoir believed that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” This caused change throughout society as it challenged that the social roles that a placed on women at not because of their sex and their biology but a response to a patriarchal society.

At the time, the world was associating both males and females as separate sexes. De Beauvoir pioneered that someone’s sex was just a biological fact, but one’s gender identity is socially contstructed. De Beauvoir believed that if for a woman’s whole life she were told that she must be a certain way to be a woman it would ultimately affect her sense of freedom. Because of this she fought to destroy the social perceptions of a patriarchal society to promote the rights and freedoms of both genders. In Australia, Germaine Greer was the leader of the second-wave of feminism. Her publication, ‘The Female Eunuch,’ (1970) was an international best seller that resulted in her widespread popularity as a figure for the women’s movement. In the book, Greer states that for women’s liberation to occur women must have sexual liberation. Like de Beauvoir, Greer believed that psychological and social differences between men and women are the result of the way society is run. The books central theme is that the traditional nuclear family expresses women sexually and that this debilitates them, rendering them ‘eunuchs.’ A eunuch traditionally refers to a man who has been castrated to deprive them of influence and importance.

The book suggests that the nuclear family does not provide a good environment for women, Western society manufactures and restricts women’s sexuality and that young girls are taught to be submissive females from childhood. All of these concepts suggest that women, as they grow, embrace the stereotypical version of adult femininity produced by society and men. Because of Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer, the contemporary feminist theories of the second-wave, encouraged a common female identity and pride.

Prior to the second-wave of feminism, feminists were focussed primarily on the woman’s right to vote. The second-wave of feminism caused a change in society’s way of thinking about issues surrounding the identity, sexuality, and ability of women in the contemporary world. The late 1960’s grew a revolt by women against their oppression as a sex. Young women-students, working women and housewives challenged the most fundemental features of the historical oppression. In France and Australia, the women’s liberation movement develoed as a part of a more general upsurge of the working class and other exploited and oppressed sections of the population.