Later this month, on January 9, is the birth anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir, one of the most influential voices who spoke for feminism and liberty. Her book The Second Sex was a groundbreaking work of feminist philosophy that was the foundational text for the second wave of feminism and continues to inspire women 76 years after it was published.
At the risk of offending conservatives, she was the first to articulate that femininity is a social construct and that biology is a fact but should not become a woman’s destiny. She questioned and critiqued the “myths” of femininity—always nurturing and supportive mother, muse, wife—as traps to keep women in a state of submissiveness and justify male dominance.
When The Second Sex was first published, it was met with as much admiration as outrage and hostility and was even placed on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books. However, by the 1960s, it became the "Bible" for a new generation of activists and influenced writers like Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique; Kate Millett, the author of Sexual Politics; and Germaine Greer, the author of The Female Eunuch.
Her intellectual output was prodigious—novels, essays, short stories, biographies, her memoirs, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues.
Rather than being an armchair activist, she led radical legal changes in France. In 1971, she authored and signed the Manifesto of the 343, in which 343 women (including celebrities) admitted to having had illegal abortions. At the time, abortion was illegal in France, and by admitting publicly to having aborted, women exposed themselves to the risk of criminal prosecution (a few decades earlier, abortion was punishable by death). The manifesto called for the legalisation of abortion and free access to contraception. It paved the way for the Veil Act, named after health minister Simone Veil, which repealed the penalty for voluntarily terminating a pregnancy.
Beauvoir was raised Catholic and educated in convent schools. She was deeply religious and intended to become a nun. At age 14, Beauvoir began to question her faith and would go on to abandon religion in her teens (information from the net). She remained an atheist for the rest of her life. She wrote in her book, All Said And Done, “Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself."
She consistently held the position that women’s liberation was impossible without economic independence, advocating for women's right to work and control their own finances. Her father, Françoise Beauvoir, had once stated, “Simone has a man's brain; she thinks like a man; she is a man.” In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, she wrote, “My father's individualism and pagan ethical standards were in complete contrast to the rigidly moral conventionalism of my mother's teaching. This disequilibrium, which made my life a kind of endless disputation, is the main reason why I became an intellectual.”
At a time when women did not go much for higher education, Simone de Beauvoir studied mathematics, philosophy, literature, and languages. It was in her student years that she met Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she had a long relationship, and Rene Maheu, who gave her the nickname Castor (Beaver). She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and excelled there too.
Beauvoir lived her philosophy. Her unconventional, non-exclusive, lifelong partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre—based on intellectual equality and contingent rather than necessity-based love—challenged the traditional institution of marriage. She believed that a woman could lead a life of radical autonomy, prioritising her work and intellectual freedom over societal expectations. She said in an interview with Caroline Moorehead of The New York Times, “I think marriage is a very alienating institution, for men as well as for women. I think it's a very dangerous institution—dangerous for men, who find themselves trapped, saddled with a wife and children to support; dangerous for women, who aren't financially independent and end up depending on men who can throw them out when they are 40; and very dangerous for children, because their parents vent all their frustrations and mutual hatred on them. The very words 'conjugal rights' are dreadful. Any institution which solders one person to another, obliging people to sleep together who no longer want to, is a bad one.”
When asked in a 1975 interview with Betty Friedan if she would support a minimum wage for women who do housework, she said, "No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorised to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.” Childless by choice, she believed, “Motherhood should be a choice and not a result of conditioning.””
Her work remains a call to action, even today, when reproductive rights and gender roles are still debated and traditional roles continue to be forced upon women in conservative societies.
In 2025, there has been a resurgence of Beauvoir in popular culture, often termed the "It-Girl Literary" movement. Celebrities like Kaia Gerber and Kendall Jenner have been photographed carrying Beauvoir’s books, turning The Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter into both intellectual and aesthetic symbols for a new generation of "booktok" influencers. Emma Watson, Dua Lipa, and Miuccia Prada have declared that they are fans of her work. Miu Miu even set up newsstands in Paris, Milan, Beijing, and Hong Kong, giving away thousands of copies of Beauvoir's books in custom Miu Miu dust jackets. This turned The Second Sex and The Inseparables into the most photographed accessories of the year.
Every new generation of women (and men) who encounter the work of Simone de Beauvoir would find ideas that are radical, timeless, and maybe life-changing.
Deepa Gahlot is a Mumbai-based columnist, critic and author.
