Women’s Leadership and Political Opportunity Structures

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) was published seventy years ago at the outset of second-wave feminism and presented a celebrated philosophical and meticulous study of women in their contemporary and historic(al) situations from various angles, such as psychoanalytical, historical, literary, and biological. De Beauvoir analyzes the feminine myth as it appears in works of famous writers highlighting that each separate author contributes to the great collective myth of women. In works of thinkers she chooses to interpret, the woman appears as a privileged Other. Women, according to de Beauvoir, belonged to this category for centuries: “she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.” The Otherness is usually a hostile entity, as it is perceived by various social strata; De Beauvoir acknowledges a woman of letters and femme philosophe Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) as one of those wo/men who dared to protest against their harsh destiny and unjust position. Gouges is known not only for her book The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), but also as one of the first advocates who defended women’s human rights and victims of injustice, and for demanding the emancipation of slaves.