Simone de Beauvoir and Subsequent Feminism. Controversies Surrounding The Second Sex

Abstract

After examinig the most important and controversial themes of The Second Sex, such as the condition of Others lived by women, the origin of their oppression and the experience of being a woman across the different stages of life, this paper comments on three books by three women theorists of feminism who deal with same of the Beauvoirian issues in depth. The paper then focuses on the neo-feminism of the seventies, in which Beauvoir took active part, and it finally presents the controversy over The Second Sex in the last two decades: on one side the critic of Beauvoir's supposed Sartrean influence and on the other, the acknowledgement of a philosophy with accents of its own.