French existentialist philosopher whose The Second Sex (1949) provided the twentieth century's foundational analysis of women's oppression — arguing that 'woman' is not a biological fact but a social construction imposed by a male-defined world — and whose life as a public intellectual, writer, and activist embodied the freedom she theorized.
'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.' Eight words that changed the framework of feminist thought. De Beauvoir published them in 1949. The argument they announce — that femininity is not nature but culture — became the foundation of second-wave feminism, gender theory, and much of contemporary thinking about identity.