The Second Sex Analysis

INTRODUCTION The first years of the twenty first century have been marked by the rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism. The Digital Revolution which began around the nineteen eighties also continues into the present. Mankind has achieved heights beyond imagination. The horizon of his accomplishments has no limits. Though he acquired everything, he failed to understand and appreciate his fellow beings. It is a controversy that even an educated; wise man cannot respect and treat women as a human being rather than an object. Simone de Beauvoir says in her work The Second Sex, “In women on the contrary there is from the beginning a conflict between her autonomous existence and her objective self, her ‘being- the other’, she is

The second wave might be understood as trying to address all of those aspects of women’s oppressed experience that are not addressed once legal, economic and intellectual equality are achieved. The women most frequently credited with bringing in the second wave of feminism are Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). De Beauvoir was one of the twentieth century’s leading intellectuals and her book, The Second Sex (1949) was an unprecedented study of the cultural myths, social standards, and life situations of women. It is often credited as the foundational text of second-wave feminism. She called her rejection of a women 's movement a shortcoming of The Second Sex. She also said the most important thing women can do in their lives is work, so they can be independent. Work was not perfect, nor was it a solution to all problems, but it was the first condition for women 's independence. Simone de Beauvoir also theorized that women could not be truly liberated until the system of patriarchal society itself was overthrown , women needed to be liberated individually, but they also needed to fight in solidarity with the political left and the working classes. Her ideas were compatible with the belief that “the personal is political”. The notion of a "woman 's nature" struck Simone de Beauvoir as further oppression. She called motherhood

First, Walker inscribes the black woman as a knowing/thinking subject who is always in pursuit of knowledge, "wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered 'good ' for one," thus, interrogating the epistemological exclusions she endures in intellectual life in general and feminist scholarship in particular. Second, she highlights the black woman 's agency, strength, capability, and independence. Opposed to the gender separatism that bedevils feminism, womanism presents an alternative for black women by framing their survival in the context of the survival of their community where the fate of women and that of men are inextricably linked. As Patricia Hill Collins aptly notes, "many black women view feminism as a movement that at best, is exclusively for women, and, at worst, dedicated to attacking or eliminating men … Womanism seemingly supplies a way for black women to address gender-oppression without attacking black men" (p.