INSIGHTS: One Is Not Born, but Becomes, a Genius - Another Simone De Beauvoir: Newcastle University

Learn about Simon de Beauvoir's pivotal work The Second Sex with this British Academy lecture led by Dr Kate Kirkpatrick at Newcastle University.

Simone de Beauvoir has often been called the ‘mother’ of second-wave feminism, with The Second Sex its bible. ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ is widely cited as a slogan for the view that gender is socially constructed. But the book itself never uses the word ‘gender’ – and its central question is not ‘What is a woman?’; rather, The Second Sex is an existential experiment with a liberatory aim, asking: ‘How, in the feminine condition, can a human being accomplish herself?’