French writer, philosopher, cultural critic, and public intellectual Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908–April 14, 1986) is celebrated as the mother of contemporary feminism. Her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a seminal account of woman’s role as an “other” in a world dominated and defined by male power, framed much of the dialogue on women’s rights and gender equality in the decades that followed, shaping the subsequent work of iconic reconstructionists like Betty Friedan and Gloria...
