Diversity Reading List

Published in French in 1949, it is usually considered the foundational book of second wave feminism, characterized by a shift from the conquering of political rights of first wave feminism (franchise, basic emancipation) to a concern for general equality, at home, in the workplace, etc. Beauvoir's first question is the very definition of a woman, and her core ideas draw from phenomenology. She elaborates an existential account of being a woman: womanhood does not consist of fixed characteristics, but is a project carried out by a free agent in a material, collective situation, creating meaning through action in a given context. Understanding the category of woman as a collective construction and the result of a series of actions and representations allows for the re-actualization of the Marxist notion of alienation, where women are stranger to themselves, operating on values imposed by men rather than found in a lived practice. In two volumes, Beauvoir seeks to highlight both the cultural, historical and economical background of genders ("Facts and Myths") and the "Lived Experience" resulting from it. Through a reading of Hegel, she rethinks gender categories as a dynamic and unequal process, and from there traces the possibility of a liberation from the perceived secondary character of women. Groundbreaking in feminist and continental philosophy, placed on the catholic Index of forbidden books, it remains a revolutionary work until today.