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De Beauvoir's goal is to show how important emancipation is for women, but also how difficult it is' Discuss in relation to The Second Sex£7.49
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This essay analyses De Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' and how she highlights the importance of female emancipation. it focuses on:
- the socialisation of women
- existentialist influence
- relationship between men and women
- tragedy of marriage
- why emancipation is difficult
“De Beauvoir's goal is to show how important emancipation is for women, but also how difficult
it is” Discuss in relation to The Second Sex
In De Beauvoir’s (1949) ‘The Second Sex’ she describes the unequal world women live in and whilst
the emancipation of women is essential, she notes its difficulty. The socialisation of young women to
be ‘the Other’ and how that impacts women existentially results in women often finding it impossible
to transcend to complete emancipation. In addition, the relationship between men and women
throughout history has seen men take advantage of the female presence with contradictory and
unrealistic expectations of women which can also be seen through the construct of marriage. De
Beauvoir highlights marriage as a critical component that makes the emancipation of women difficult.
This essay will highlight these four components with contemporary examples to showcase De
Beauvoir’s depiction of feminism and female emancipation as something women may never be able to
accomplish.
The Socialisation of Women
One way De Beauvoir highlights the difficulty of the emancipation of women is through the
socialisation of children. In ‘The Second Sex’, a critical topic that De Beauvoir discusses is the
formative years of children and makes the psychoanalytic claim that “One is not born but rather
becomes a woman” (De Beauvoir, 1949: 273). This allows the reader to understand the construction
of femininity and that concepts such as ‘femininity’ are made by men to ensure their superiority and
treat women as ‘the Other’. This idea suggests the mere biology of women is not what makes them
who they are and instead women are made by society and social constructs. The formative years of
childhood often distinguish men believing they are “a demigod as compared with women” (De
Beauvoir, 1949: 23) while women are socialised to be nurturing, mothers and naturally passive. We
can see this throughout history with toys and hobbies that are gendered to suit the passive female
gender. For example, women are exposed to dolls, and tea sets while boys are exposed to trucks and
soldiers. Dolls promote a more empathetic nature to young girls because they are responsible to look
after someone while soldiers promote an aggressive and dominant nature (Oksman, 2016). However,
, the gender preference for toys ‘only show[s] up after children learn about their gender. Babies show
no preference’ (Brown, 2014), this highlights De Beauvoir's argument that ‘one is not born but rather
becomes a woman’ and girls are constantly in the process of ‘becoming’ women. If women are
nurtured in an environment of motherhood, and passiveness, and have the goal of getting married,
having kids and being a housewife, the socialisation of these young women will hinder the ability for
them to be completely emancipated. Therefore, De Beauvoir conveys that socialisation creates
submissive women as society treats women as ‘the Other’ and their feelings, goals and ambitions are
often ignored. This deflating feeling is successfully highlighted as De Beauvoir talks about ‘The
Young Girl’, and depicts the small actions and social queues that pile onto each other. For example,
De Beauvoir talks about the girl and why she stops ‘emerging’ and asserting herself in sports and says
that women are “forbidden to explore, to venture, to extend the limits of the possible” (De Beauvoir,
1949: 329). This accurately shows how women limit their ability within the possible and highlight the
long-term impact it has on women's mentality towards what is in the realm of possibility. Women
constantly consider themselves 'the Other' and doubt their ability in comparison to men from a young
age with trivial hobbies such as sports. This structure continues to grow into classrooms, workplaces,
relationships and onto the next generation making the eventual emancipation of women a cycle
difficult to interject and change.
In contemporary society, we continue to see De Beauvoir’s argument of female socialisation and the
impact that has on women’s lives. Women are often more likely to go into secondary roles rather than
senior roles (Vieira, 2017) and only 24 per cent of women are in the Science, Technology, Engineering
and Maths workforce (Statista, 2019). This perpetuates the idea that women struggle to achieve
emancipation from men, as men continue to dominate statistics in the public sphere (Rosicki, 2012).
De Beauvoir discusses the atmosphere women are surrounded and socialised into and argues that
“there is a unanimous agreement that getting a husband… is for her the most important undertakings”
(De Beauvoir, 1949: 328). This means that women are socialised in an environment where marriage
and kids are the primary ambition through societal gender construction while men are socialised from
a young age with the ability to have greater ambitions and goals with marriage and kids as something
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