The Second Sex

The Second Sex is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir on the treatment of women in her own society and throughout history, written in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949 and published in two volumes, Facts and Myths and Lived Experience. Beauvoir argued that man is treated as the default and woman as the Other. The first French edition sold around 22,000 copies in a week, and the Vatican placed it on its List of Prohibited Books. Translated into 40 languages, it is regarded as a groundbreaking work of feminist philosophy and a starting point of second-wave feminism.