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Veltman, Andrea. Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt on Labor
2010, Hypatia 25 (1):55 - 78
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Added by: Deryn Mair Thomas
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Comparing the typologies of human activities developed by Beauvoir and Arendt, I argue that these philosophers share the same concept of labor as well as a similar insight that labor cannot provide a justification or evaluative measure for human life. But Beauvoir and Arendt think differently about work (as contrasted with labor), and Arendt alone illuminates the inability of constructive work to provide non-utilitarian value for human existence. Beauvoir, on the other hand, exceeds Arendt in examining the ethical implications of our existential need for a plurality of free peers in a public realm.

Comment: This essay presents a side-by side analysis of both de Beauvoir's and Arendt's philosophical accounts of labour and work. It also touches on some of the ethical implications of those accounts, and their meaning for a philosphical understanding of the concepts of work and labor as they relate to human life. The author highlights a previously unnoticed similarity between how both thinkers approaches the concept of labor, as the category of human activity relegated to the inherently ephemeral: 'labor itself produces no great works or deed worthy of remembrance, nor does it directly contribute to constructing the artifice of the human world that distinguishes human existence from unchanging animal life.' She also discusses the author approaches as they relate to their major predecessor on the topic: Marx. As such, the essay may be used in a variety of intermediate undergraduate as well as master's level courses covering work and labor, feminist perspectives on work and labor, the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt, respectively, or even philosophical critiques of Marx. The text, while offering a close textual read of both others, also has value for it's broader take on the concepts of work and labor - concepts which have not been readily discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy outside of the Marxist literature.
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Veltman, Andrea. The Sisyphean Torture of Housework: Simone de Beauvoir and Inequitable Divisions of Domestic Work in Marriage
2004, Hypatia 19 (3):121-143
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Added by: Deryn Mair Thomas
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This paper examines Simone de Beauvoir's account of marriage in The Second Sex and argues that Beauvoir's dichotomy between transcendence and immanence can provide an illuminating critique of continuing gender inequities in marriage and divisions of domestic work. Beauvoir's existentialist ethics not only establishes a moral wrong in marriages in which wives perform the second shift of household labor but also supports the need to transform existing normative expectations surrounding wives and domestic work.

Comment: This paper revisits the contemporary literature on the gendered divisions of household labour and argues for a new ethical framework based on Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of marriage in terms of transcendence and immanence. According to Beauvoir, 'marriage is oppressive and involves a moral wrong when it facilitates the transcendence of one spouse by relegating the other to the round of relatively uncreative chores needed to maintain life in the home.' Veltman also argues that, contrary to a common reading of de Beauvoir's account, de Beauvoir does not reject marriage per se, but in fact leaves open the opportunity for reform, such that a marriage 'has the potential to support equitable unions between free beings.' For this reason, the paper may be useful as specialised or further reading for courses interested in contemporary feminist critiques, the work of Simone de Beauvoir, or more broadly, 20th Century feminism. In addition, it also offers an interesting discussion of housework and domestic labor which may prove useful in the context of courses examining work and gendered divisions of labour. It would also be well paired with the work of Hannah Arendy, and another of Veltman's essays, "Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt on Labor."
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Young, Iris Marion. Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility and Spatiality
1980, Human Studies 3(1), pp. 137 - 156
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Added by: Harry Lewendon-Evans
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From the introduction: This paper seeks to begin to fill a gap that thus exists both in existential phenomenology and feminist theory. It traces in a provisional way some of the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and relation in space. It brings intelligibility and significance to certain observable and rather ordinary ways in which women in our society typically comport themselves and move differently from the ways that men do. In accordance with the existentialist concern with the situatedness of human experience, I make no claim to the universality of this typicality of the bodily comportment of women and the phenonemological description based on it. The account developed here claims only to describe the modalities of feminine bodily existence for women situated in contemporary advanced industrial, urban, and commercial society. Elements of the account developed here may or may not apply to the situation of woman in other societies and other epoch, but it is not the concern of this paper to determine to which, if any, other social circumstances this account applies.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This paper provides a clear and useful introduction to the notionYoung's paper "Throwing Like a Girl" has become a classic text on the embodiment of gender and thus an important touchstone for contemporary discussions on the effects of gender norms. Given an embodied view of the mind, Young's paper can also be said to elucidate not only how we enact gender norms but also how gender permeates our way of cognitively interacting with the world. Thus, this reading compliments the chapters from Butnor & MacKenzie and Rudder Baker, while introducing the reader to two prominent phenomenologists which the feminist philosophy of mind movement draws on: Simone de Beavoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This paper would also nicely compliment Benette Jackson's chapter "Embodiments of Sex and Gender: The Metaphors of Speaking Surfaces" in Maitra and McWeeny's Feminist Philosophy of Mind. of gendered bodily experience. It would be a useful introductory piece for any course that studies the role of the body more generally, such as courses on phenomenology, philosophy of race/gender, or issues in cognitive science.
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