Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Finally!

Finally, after 60 years we English speakers/readers have the complete unabridged version of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.
de Beauvoir set out to anaylze the concept of woman--coming to the conclusion that women are "othered" by society. This study in the making and maintaining of women's inequality was eye opening when it was abridged, the unabridged version (What is a 2 volume paperback version in French is a 700 + page book in English) should only solidify more her argument.


Unfortunately, sixty years after she wrote this foundational book, women are still othered. Our rights are traded away as if they were baseball cards when legislation is written. Women are still earning roughly a quarter of what men earn--and those earnings matter from quality of life to political support to retirement.

Hopefully the republication of this book will spur on this generation of young women as it did their mothers and grandmothers before them.

1 comment:

Dr. JAM said...

We will be meeting at Inquiring Minds July 14th at 7 pm to discuss this book.