The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949) is the best known work of Simone de Beauvoir and a seminal text in twentieth-century feminism. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major feminist work. In it, she argues that women throughout history have been defined as the "other" sex, an aberration from the "normal" male sex. It helped lead the way of second-wave feminism. 1949 (MCMXLIX) is a common year starting on Saturday. ... Simone de Beauvoir Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986) was a French author, philosopher, and feminist. ... Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies, largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women, especially in terms of their social, political, and economic situation. ... Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ... Second-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 1960s and 1970s. ...
Androcentrism (Greek ανδρο, andro-, man, male, χεντρον, kentron, center) is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or the masculine point of view at the center of ones view of the world and its culture and history. ...
In this description of the conflict between the warmth and companionship in a woman's traditional role and the loneliness of her future, Beauvoir lays the groundwork for her analysis in The SecondSex of woman's temptation to complicity with her oppression as the Other.
One clue to Beauvoir's innovation is her reliance in The SecondSex on an analogy with racism, which provided a model for oppression.
One source of influence on Beauvoir's theory of racism in The SecondSex, is Gunnar Myrdal's massive sociological study of the American race relations, An American Dilemma (1944).
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