Uploaded October 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Dr Kate Kirkpatrick, University of Oxford

Chaired by Dr Stacy Gillis

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?’


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