Simone de Beauvoir was a French feminist existentialist writer, philosopher and intellectual. Born into a wealthy family on 9 January 1908, de Beauvoir was given a strict upbringing by her devout Catholic mother, Françoise. Her mother came from a rich banker's family, while her father, Georges, worked as a legal secretary. After World War 1, de Beauvoir's maternal grandfather suffered a substantial financial loss and went bankrupt. From being well-off members of the Parisian bourgeoisie, the family now slipped into poverty. De Beauvoir had a younger sister named Hélène, and was well aware that her father would have preferred a son. Her mother insisted that the two siblings attend a prestigious convent school, and de Beauvoir herself was deeply religious as a child. Once she was in her teens however, she abandoned her faith, remaining an atheist for the rest of her life.

It is safe to say that de Beauvoir, notwithstanding her mother's strict upbringing and her father's desire to have a son instead of two daughters, had ample support from her father, who encouraged her intellectual precocity. She developed an interest in theatre and philosophy like her father, and was an excellent student. Her father was proud of her intellectual aptitude, and would often remark that his daughter “thinks like a man”. She studied mathematics, philosophy and languages at different institutions in Paris, and went on to pursue a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne, which she received in 1928. After this, she took courses at the École Normale Supérieure to prepare for her agrégation in philosophy. The agrégation is a highly competitive postgraduate examination, which also serves as a national ranking of students. While studying there, she met Paul Nizan, René Maheu and Jean-Paul Sartre, who she would remain close friends with throughout her life. De Beauvoir came second in the agrégation, only narrowly defeated by Sartre who placed first. At age 21, she became the youngest person ever to have passed the exam.

From 1929 to 1943, de Beauvoir worked as a teacher at secondary schools in three different cities. In late 1929, she and Sartre became a couple, and the two remained partners until Sartre's death in 1980. The couple never married, and were known for their open relationship, which allowed them to pursue intimate relations with several other partners. De Beauvoir has often been characterised as a shadow to Sartre when it comes to philosophical development, and their relationship has frequently been allowed to overshadow the multitude of her contributions. There is no doubt that Simone de Beauvoir was an accomplished writer and philosopher, regardless of her relation to Sartre. She was influenced by thinkers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, and much of her philosophical work concerned existential questions about freedom and individuality.

Apart from her more philosophical work, she also wrote a number of novels which featured fictionalised versions of her and Sartre as the main protagonists, exploring the personal lives of them and their close friends as well as their intimate relationships with others. Her 1954 novel The Mandarins, which included rich details about her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, earned her the Prix Goncourt, which is the most prestigious literary prize in France. Together with Sartre, she edited a journal called Le Temps Modernes (Modern Times), which frequently featured her own texts, as well as pieces from various French thinkers. Apart from these works, many of Simone de Beauvoir writings also had an explicit feminist content. She wrote several texts in which she discussed the plight of women and detailed her views on female oppression. The most important of these is The Second Sex, published in 1949, which will be discussed below.

Although celebrated as a public intellectual, Simone de Beauvoir was at times a controversial figure, not least when it came to her personal life. She was bisexual, and was often accused of seducing her young female students while working as a teacher. One of these young women, Bianca Lamblin, ended up publishing a work in 1996 which laid out the extent of de Beauvoir's seduction and sexual exploitation of her, and the emotional distress and other difficulties she faced after she was ultimately betrayed and rejected by her. Allegations of such conduct was what finally led to the revocation of de Beauvoir's license to teach in France.

Later in her life, especially in the 1950s and 60s, Simone de Beauvoir published travel diaries about her time in the United States and China, which became very popular. She also published a large number of essays and pieces of fiction, including several collections of short stories. Apart from these, she wrote a four-volume autobiography, in which the theme of women's liberation was a prominent feature. There is thus no denying that de Beauvoir was a prolific writer, who published various kinds of texts that earned her admiration from both fellow intellectuals and the public at large.

Although she was a firm believer in and advocate for women's economic independence and equality in education, for a long time, she was reluctant to call herself a feminist. After witnessing the resurgence of feminist movement, and joining the cause herself, she realised that a socialist revolution was not enough to achieve female emancipation, and publicly declared herself a feminist in 1972. In the 1970s, she became involved in the French women's liberation movement, an engagement that continued until her death. While she highlighted the importance of women's individual liberation, she emphasised the need for political organisation to overthrow the patriarchy.

Simone de Beauvoir died on 14 April 1986, aged 78. She was mourned by many, and thousands of people gathered to pay tribute to her at her funeral. Although she died more than 30 years ago, her works are still read by people in contemporary times. During the course of her life, she influenced many feminist thinkers, such as Betty Friedan, Adrienne Rich, and Germaine Greer, and continues to be an important inspiration for feminist activists and theorists today.

The Second Sex, written in 1949, has become one of the most (if not the most) well-known of Simone de Beauvoir's works. Described as a pioneering work of feminist theory, The Second Sex still counts as one of the most important feminist works today. Although it was not very well received in France when it first came out (critics claimed that feminism was already obsolete at the time), it has since been dubbed one of the most groundbreaking works of feminist literature in the 20th century.

The Second Sex, which is almost thousand pages long, consists of two volumes. The first one is titled Facts and Myths, and the second Lived Experience. In the book, Simone de Beauvoir traces the ways in which women have come to be characterised as “the second sex”, that is, as inferior to men. She asserts that men are seen as embodying the natural, while women (and women's bodies) are seen as anomalies and obstacles impossible to overcome. Men are considered to be the default, which means women become the “Other”: “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not herself but as relative to him.” To put it simply, men are subjects, while women become objects. De Beauvoir discusses biological differences between women and men, and concludes that women's role in reproduction constitutes the root of their subordination and oppression. She argues that freedom from reproductive slavery and participation in production are the two main factors that can explain the evolution of women's situation. She rejects the view that biological differences can be used to justify the subordination of women, and asserts that it is solely based in social, cultural and historical oppression of women, who were never given the same opportunities as men. She cites women like Rosa Luxemburg and Marie Curie as examples that “brilliantly demonstrate that it is not women's inferiority that has determined their historical insignificance: it is their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority”.

The second part of the book begins with what is perhaps the most famous of Simone de Beauvoir's quotes: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” With this sentence, she asserts that there is a distinction between biological sex and socially constructed notions of gender, and that the relation between the two is arbitrary. In this volume, she describes the different stages in a woman's life, starting from birth. She discusses the differences in upbringing of girls and boys, and argues that women's “maternal instinct” is nothing more than a social construction, imposed on girls from the day they are born. De Beauvoir goes on to describe marriage, which she insists is a perverted institution that is oppressive to both women and men. She stresses that women are confined by marriage to be housewives, forced to do labour in the household, which completely strips them of their potential to lead their lives on par with men. She maintains that “for woman there is no other way out than to work for her liberation”. In the conclusion of her book, Simone de Beauvoir writes that she looks forward to a future where women and men are equals, and that this can only happen if both women and men work together to achieve this goal.

When reading The Second Sex, it becomes apparent that many of the things Simone de Beauvoir writes about are as true today as they were 70 years ago, when it was first published. Progress has definitely been made since the book was written, but it remains a fact that women and men are still not equal. For now, we can only hope that Simone de Beauvoir's hopes for the future can be realised in time to come, through a united and collective commitment to achieve equality for all.