Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was born on 9 January 1908 in Montparnasse in Paris, into a bourgeois Catholic family. Her father Georges was a lawyer with theatrical ambitions; her mother Françoise Brasseur was deeply devout. The dowry promised to her mother never materialised, so the family was less well off than expected. Her sister Hélène was born in 1910.

She attended the Cours Désir and then studied mathematics, literature and philosophy in Paris, including at the Sorbonne. In 1929 she passed the agrégation in philosophy, placing second behind Jean-Paul Sartre; she was then the youngest person to have passed. Through this examination she met Sartre, with whom she had a relationship until his death in 1980.

From 1931 to 1943 she taught philosophy at lycées in Marseille, Rouen and Paris, until she could live from her writing. She made her debut in 1943 with the novel 'She Came to Stay' (L'Invitée) and wrote essays on existentialist ethics, including 'Pyrrhus et Cinéas' (1944) and 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' (1947). She did not consider herself a philosopher.

In 1949 'The Second Sex' (Le Deuxième Sexe) appeared in two volumes. She argues that social and historical circumstances place women in the role of the 'Other'. Her sentence 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' is seen as a first formulation of the distinction between sex and gender. She links the existentialist idea of freedom to the situation of women.

She also wrote novels and memoirs, such as 'The Mandarins' (1954, Prix Goncourt) and 'Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter' (1958). She was associated with the journal Les Temps modernes, founded in 1945, and travelled, including across the United States in 1947, about which she published a diary.

Beauvoir wrote in the France of the Third Republic, the German Occupation (1940–1944) and the postwar years. After 1945 existentialism, with its idea that existence precedes essence, became an intellectual and cultural current around Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Sartre and Beauvoir regularly worked and met friends in cafés such as the Café de Flore.

The position of women was limited: French women gained the vote only in 1944, contraception was legalised in 1967 and abortion in 1975 under conditions. Against that background 'The Second Sex' (1949) examined marriage, motherhood and sexuality as social institutions and asked to what extent 'femininity' is natural or learned.

'The Second Sex' became an authoritative foundational text of modern feminism. The first English translation (1953), by the biologist Howard Parshley, was partly inaccurate and abridged; only in 2009–2010 did a complete translation appear, by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. Beauvoir publicly called herself a feminist only in 1972.

In the 1970s she became active in the French women's movement. In 1971 she wrote and signed the 'Manifesto of the 343', in which 343 women publicly stated that they had had abortions, then illegal in France. The Veil Act legalised abortion in 1975 under conditions; the manifesto is seen as a step on that road.

She also took a stand in the Algerian War of Independence. She wrote a defence of Djamila Boupacha, an Algerian activist arrested during the war, and helped set up a defence committee. This provoked fierce reactions and threats, and made her a visible voice in the public debate about the war.

Beauvoir died on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78, and is buried next to Sartre in Montparnasse Cemetery. She received the Prix Goncourt (1954) and the Jerusalem Prize (1975), among other honours. Her relationship with Sartre was lifelong but non-exclusive, without marriage or cohabitation; it is seen both as a deliberately chosen alternative and as a subject of criticism.

In 1943 she was suspended as a teacher after a complaint by the mother of a former pupil; the investigation could not confirm a relationship. Her licence was reinstated in 1945, but she did not teach again. Later publications of letters and diaries and testimonies of those involved, including Bianca Lamblin, fed the debate about her relationships with younger women and the reliability of her memoirs.

In 1977 she signed, with other French intellectuals, a petition in Le Monde calling for the release of three arrested men who had had sexual contact with minors aged 12 and 13; this has since been criticised. At the same time 'The Second Sex' remains a widely read and debated work in feminist theory and philosophy.