The Second Sex

‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ With this single sentence, Simone de Beauvoir changed the way the world thinks about gender — and everything that followed in twentieth-century feminism traces its lineage back to this extraordinary book.

First published in France in 1949 to immediate scandal and immediate recognition, The Second Sex is the most comprehensive account ever written of women’s situation in modern society. It is simultaneously philosophy, sociology, history, literary criticism, and autobiography. Drawing on existentialist analysis, psychoanalysis, and a range of reading that encompasses biology, economics, and mythology, de Beauvoir dismantles the idea that femininity is natural or inevitable and reveals it as a construction — a role imposed by a culture organised around male interests and male freedom.

This landmark translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier restores the full force of de Beauvoir’s original text. To read it is to have your thinking permanently reorganised. One of the most important books of the twentieth century — possibly of any century. Published by Vintage.