Women as the Other
As the world continues to struggle for equality of all types including race, gender, sexual
orientation and religion, the struggle for women to progress in society and maintain the
same legal rights as those of our male counterparts continues on.
French existentialist Simone De Beauvoir urged women to shed the restraints that were put
on them by their own feminine mystique and grab the opportunities waiting for them and
currently held by men. De Beauvoir theorized that it was not really men that placed the
shackles and burdens of womanhood upon us, but rather a prison created by our own sense
of need for privilege that could only be achieved through our feminine advantage. She felt
that we make ourselves submissive out of a deep need of necessity that we feel because we
lack the resources we need and ultimately create a necessary bond that ties us to man. It is
our pleasant disposition in the role of the other sex that additionally lends to us not being
able to progress further in our endeavors as a stronger sex. We are complacent in our role
and according to De Beauvoir need “to renounce all advantages conferred upon them by
their alliance” with men. She urged women to fight for their rights to evolve to more than
the inferior roles of mother, wife, daughter and sister. These ideas led to a feminist
revolution that is still very much in bloom today.
While I fully appreciate the role for women being carved by the paths of femininity, I
