Reference no: EM133321310

Case Study: Encouraged by the successful strategy and tactics of the civil rights and antiwar movements, a new assertiveness also marked the drive for women's rights after the conclusion of World War II. One important voice in the movement for women's freedoms was that of a leading French philosopher and intellectual, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). Her lengthy, detailed, and compelling study The Second Sex, published in 1949, challenged women to take action on their own behalf in order to gain full equality with their male counterparts. That push toward equality between sexes, not "sameness" as detractors falsely state as the goal, is the overriding objective of "feminism." Her analysis traced the origins of sexism and a sense of women's inferiority to the unique circumstances of girlhood and to society's instilling of "feminine" characteristics in young women, creating a belief that men and women are unequal and that women should be held to a lesser status (i.e. as only a housewife and never a "breadwinner" as was characterized at the time of her writing). Only by breaking the barriers of societal expectations for "well-bred young girls," she argued, could women achieve the goal of true and complete equality with men. Summarily, the issue here is about equal rights and equal access to opportunities. Men and women do not have to be the "same" in physicality to have the right to equality in opportunities and rights. Sadly, though, these basic arguments are lost in the ongoing culture wars in the West, de Beauvoir's eloquent statements dismissed as oddly partisan in its calls to equality.

Housework or everyday chores that the mother does not hesitate to impose on the girl student or trainee completely exhaust her. During the war I saw my students in Sèvres worn out by family tasks added on top of their schoolwork: one developed Pott's disease, the other meningitis. Mothers-we will see-are blindly hostile to freeing their daughters and, more or less deliberately, work at bullying them even more; for the adolescent boy, his effort to become a man is respected, and he is already granted great freedom. The girl is required to stay home; her outside activities are watched over: she is never encouraged to organize her own fun and pleasure. It is rare to see women organize a long hike on their own, a walking or biking trip, or take part in games such as billiards and bowling. Beyond a lack of initiative that comes from their education, customs make their independence difficult. If they wander the streets, they are stared at, accosted. I know some girls, far from shy, who get no enjoyment strolling through Paris alone because, incessantly bothered, they are incessantly on their guard: all their pleasure is ruined. If girl students run through the streets in happy groups as boys do, they attract attention; striding along, singing, talking, and laughing loudly or eating an apple are provocations, and they will be insulted or followed or approached. Lightheartedness immediately becomes a lack of decorum. This self-control imposed on the woman becomes second nature for "the well-bred girl" and kills spontaneity; lively exuberance is crushed. The result is tension and boredom. This boredom is contagious: girls tire of each other quickly; being in the same prison does not create solidarity among them, and this is one of the reasons the company of boys becomes so necessary. This inability to be self-sufficient brings on a shyness that extends over their whole lives and even marks their work. They think that brilliant triumphs are reserved for men; they do not dare aim too high. It has already been observed that fifteen-year-old girls, comparing themselves with boys, declare, "Boys are better." This conviction is debilitating. It encourages laziness and mediocrity. A girl-who had no particular deference for the stronger sex-reproached a man for his cowardice; when she was told that she herself was a coward, she complacently declared: "Oh! It's not the same thing for a woman."

The fundamental reason for this defeatism is that the adolescent girl does not consider herself responsible for her future; she judges it useless to demand much of herself since her lot in the end will not depend on her. Far from destining herself to man because she thinks she is inferior to him, it is because she is destined for him that, in accepting the idea of her inferiority, she constitutes it.

In fact, she will gain value in the eyes of males not by increasing her human worth but by modeling herself on their dreams. When she is inexperienced, she is not always aware of this. She sometimes acts as aggressively as boys; she tries to conquer them with a brusque authority, a proud frankness: this attitude is almost surely doomed to failure. From the most servile to the haughtiest, girls all learn that to please, they must give in to them. Their mothers urge them not to treat boys like companions, not to make advances to them, to assume a passive role. If they want to flirt or initiate a friendship, they should carefully avoid giving the impression they are taking the initiative; men do not like tomboys, nor bluestockings, nor thinking women; too much audacity, culture, intelligence, or character frightens them. In most novels, as George Eliot observes, it is the dumb, blond heroine who outshines the virile brunette; and in The Mill on the Floss, Maggie tries in vain to reverse the roles; in the end she dies and it is blond Lucy who marries Stephen. In The Last of the Mohicans, vapid Alice wins the hero's heart and not valiant Cora; in Little Women kindly Jo is only a childhood friend for Laurie; he vows his love to curly-haired and insipid Amy. To be feminine is to show oneself as weak, futile, passive, and docile. The girl is supposed not only to primp and dress herself up but also to repress her spontaneity and substitute for it the grace and charm she has been taught by her elder sisters. Any self-assertion will take away from her femininity and her seductiveness.

A young man's venture into existence is relatively easy, as his vocations of human being and male are not contradictory; his childhood already predicted this happy fate. It is in accomplishing himself as independence and freedom that he acquires his social value and, concurrently, his manly prestige: the ambitious man... targets money, glory, and women all at once; one of the stereotypes that stimulates him is that of the powerful and famous man adored by women. For the girl, on the contrary, there is a divorce between her properly human condition and her feminine vocation. That is why adolescence is such a difficult and decisive moment for woman. Until then, she was an autonomous individual; she now has to renounce her sovereignty. Not only is she torn like her brothers, and more acutely, between past and future, but in addition conflict breaks out between her originary claim to be subject, activity, and freedom, on the one hand and, on the other, her erotic tendencies and the social pressure to assume herself as a passive object. She spontaneously grasps herself as the essential: how will she decide to become inessential? If I can accomplish myself only as the Other, how will I renounce my Self? Such is the agonizing dilemma the woman-to-be must struggle with. Wavering from desire to disgust, from hope to fear, rebuffing what she invites, she is still suspended between the moment of childish independence and that of feminine submission: this is the incertitude that, as she grows out of the awkward age, gives a her the bitter taste on unripe fruit.

Question 1. How, in de Beauvoir's estimation, do young women internalize feelings of inferiority and carry these ideas with them into adulthood?

Question 2. What role do the practical, daily experiences of women in the wider world play in the development of "feminine" expectations? Can these be overcome?

Question 3. Are there any biases or logical fallacies one needs to be aware of when analyzing this primary source? Did you note any biases or fallacies in your own, initial approach? Explain.