The Second Sex

A recurring question that Beauvoir raises is how much the marginalization of women has been driven by biology. Women experience physical, life-changing difficulties in the form of pregnancy, childbirth, menstruation, and menopause. Also, Beauvoir argues that biological differences make women smaller, less physically strong, and more emotional than men (43). She suggests these are significant factors that have shaped the history of women and their oppression.

However, Beauvoir is consistent in the view that there is no “physiological destiny” (753). Instead, humanity is unique among animals in having the awareness and ability to overcome its biological drives. This is what Beauvoir means when she writes a “society is not a species” and that “an individual is never left to nature” (47).

The impacts of the reproductive cycle on women are nonetheless crucial to understanding why women are in their historical position. For Beauvoir, they are a major factor in how women came to be placed in subordinate roles in society. Because pregnancy and childbirth make it difficult for women to participate in society economically, men began to associate women with Nature, furthering the concept of women as Other. Overcoming this is vital to women’s emancipation. This is why, along with women being more economically productive, women’s emancipation cannot happen without women being able to control their reproduction with birth control and abortion.