Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was a French philosopher and writer, a founder of modern feminism, author of the landmark study The Second Sex.

Simone de Beauvoir was a leading existentialist philosopher, novelist, and essayist, and a central figure of twentieth-century intellectual life in Paris alongside Jean-Paul Sartre.

Her monumental study The Second Sex (1949), with its famous assertion that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” analyzed the historical and cultural construction of womanhood and became a foundational text of modern feminism. She also wrote acclaimed novels, including The Mandarins, and candid volumes of memoir.

De Beauvoir is honored as a pioneering feminist thinker and a major philosopher whose work transformed the understanding of gender, freedom, and women’s lives.