The Second Sex presents Simone de Beauvoir’s historical account of women’s disadvantaged position in society. The text explains current theories that de Beauvoir disputes, summarizes her account of women’s place in history, and provides alternatives for how women should be treated. The work contains two volumes: one on “Facts and Myths” that de Beauvoir attempts to deconstruct, and the second on “Lived Experience,” in which she explains her own take on how women actually experience sexism day to day.
Within the first volume, de Beauvoir first focuses on biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism as three different, flawed theories for explaining the female condition. She explains that none of these theories fully explain every aspect of a woman’s situation. Biology cannot account for the ways in which society conditions people to treat one another. Psychoanalysis ignores the question of why people are driven by certain motivations to begin with. And historical materialism is too fixated on economic theories to recognize how sexuality and other factors play into men’s treatment of women, as well. This first part allows de Beauvoir to establish what kinds of explanations she will be working against when she provides her own theories in the following sections.
de Beauvoir then uses the second section of this volume to describe a history of women’s treatment in society. She begins by tracing the ways in which primitive societies already mistreated women and regarded them as inferior to men. She then explains how the advent of private property pushed men to institutionalize their oppression of women, who became regarded as property as well. de Beauvoir then acknowledges that religion also shaped men’s treatment of women by giving them moral excuses to limit women. In her fifth chapter, she considers more recent periods in which women’s situation in society was slightly improved by the granting of greater rights. However, she concludes by pointing out that traditional systems of oppression continue to this day in the spheres of reproduction, sexuality, and labor.
In the last part of this first volume, de Beauvoir discusses the ways in which women are depicted in myths and understood in literary texts. She begins by broadly summarizing how women used to be thought of as idols who represented nature and motherhood. However, she notes that even in this adulation women were feared and objectified by men. In her second chapter, she analyzes the work of several authors and philosophers who mythologized women in different, negative ways. She ends this part by considering how these myths and literary representations affect women in their day-to-day lives.
In her second volume, in which she considers women’s lived experiences, de Beauvoir summarizes a woman’s formative years, her different roles in society, the ways in which different women react to their positions, and how the modern woman is beginning to reclaim a certain kind of independence. Her section on a woman’s formative years summarizes how a girl passes through childhood, into girlhood, and through sexual initiation in ways that are more traumatic and limiting than a male’s experience of these phases. de Beauvoir also, more problematically, considers homosexuality as a phenomenon affecting women who reject the masculine sphere.
The second part of the second volume is the longest section of the book and summarizes the many different roles a woman can play in society. It is in this section that de Beauvoir presents her main ideas: women are limited in every role they can play in society, and are thus forced to adopt certain traits and coping mechanisms that have made them even more inferior in society. Because woman cannot be productive or creative, she gives herself up completely to serving men and children. As a result, however, most women are left miserable, unfulfilled, and temperamental. This leads de Beauvoir into the third part of this volume, in which she discusses how different women react to this situation either by becoming obsessed with themselves, giving themselves up completely to their lovers, or devoting themselves to mysticism.
Finally, de Beauvoir concludes her text by arguing that genuine equality between the sexes has not yet been achieved in her society, but would be beneficial for both genders. She describes how the independent woman of her day still faces greater challenges than men do because traditional values regarding marriage, reproduction, and femininity continue into her day. However, she also ends on the more optimistic note that if women are given equal opportunities, they can achieve just as much as men can.
