Simone de Beauvoir’s quote “Womanhood is a social construct” is one that came from her book, “The Second Sex” written in 1949. The book itself has had a lasting effect on our society, causing the questioning and critiquing of the patriarchy and the causes for the inferiority of women. The use of phenomenology and feminist existentialism, even Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism, provides a way of seeing women through embodied experiences and as free agents. I firmly believe that phenomenology and feminist existentialism can provide a way of combatting the belief that womanhood is something that is inherent in all women and therefore can liberate women by ridding them of these attached preconceptions. Today, womanhood is not only seen as the condition of being a woman, rather, with the term comes false ideals and seemingly “natural” characteristics that come with being a woman, the most obvious example being of women as housewives. Of course today, we know that this is not always the case but I wish to argue that there is no such thing as “womanhood” and that phenomenology and feminist existentialism show this to be true. According to de Beauvoir, the goal of liberation is the mutual recognition of each other as free as the other; this is not the case if there are fixed roles that either sex has to undertake. As well as Simone de Beauvoir, I would also like to look at Jean-Paul Sartre and how their romantic and intellectual relationship shaped their respective philosophical theories; this is to highlight the importance of their work in tandem.
De Beauvoir combats the view of womanhood being something that is inherent to all women by showing the origins of male supremacy that established this view of women. De Beauvoir states that it is “man’s world” and that male supremacy is something that has been prehistorically engrained (she refers to the time of the Nomads) and that persistent inequality has elevated the male sex to superiority. Three main reasons can be identified as the causes of male supremacy and this starts in the prehistoric times. The first is that women have the “bondage of reproduction” therefore making them dependent on men for food and protection. Through pregnancy, childbirth and menstruation women are put at a disadvantage and this is exacerbated by the fact they are unable to fulfil their ability to work. The lack of birth control meant that a pregnant woman would have her energy and time absorbed; we see that women are able to reproduce but cannot create unlike their male counterparts who forge their futures with their freedom. LINK TO THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. The second cause of male supremacy is that of domestic labours being merely functions. These functions are only ever carried out by women and therefore “imprisoned her in repetition and immanence” . To clarify, De Beauvoir uses the word “immanence” to describe a state in which women are restricted as it contrasts freedom and transcendence. The “repetition” that De Beauvoir speaks of has been perpetuated throughout centuries to such a large extent that it has become “the norm”. Finally, the early man’s activity was usually dangerous, “it is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal…superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills” . It is this extra element of danger men had to face that made them worthy of such veneration. We see that the combination of these reasons put women at a disadvantage because it is a lot harder for women to fulfil their self-realisation with such imposed restrictions instead they are “submitted passively to her biological fate” . Such problems can still be seen today, in LEDCs women are still confined to their biological purposes and processes such as menstruation can even be life threatening (period shed). De Beauvoir then goes on to speak of why inequality persists and speaks of their being two distinct economic “castes” between men and women. The first being that the burdens of marriage are heavier on women than men, it is “more difficult for a woman than for a man to reconcile her family life with her role as a worker” . This is followed by the fact that women who seek independence through work usually do this at their expense and under less favourable circumstances. This is evidently seen in the gender pay gap where women are paid less than men in the workplace and in the lack of women in high positions. De Beauvoir makes this explicit, “for equal work she does not get equal pay” . The final reason is that society has not changed its expectations of women. Although it can be said that women have the same opportunities, they can receive an education and have a job yet it is true that marriage is “the most honourable career” . Furthermore, such apparently evident opportunities are not available to the majority of women in LEDCs and the women of the west are privileged in this respect. From De Beauvoir we can see that women are in a state of subjection, they are unable to escape imposed standards created from the prehistoric time and it is these standards that have culminated to create such a loaded term as “womanhood”. De Beauvoir speaks of the importance of awareness of the self as a way to escape this imposed label, instead women should be understood on the basis of her potential and not her limitations. De Beauvoir uses French phenomenological philosopher Merleau-Ponty to explain her point, “as Merleau-Ponty very justly puts it, man is not a natural species…woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming, and it is in her becoming that she should be compared with man”. Although De Beauvoir paints a bleak image of the situation of women, it is not hopeless because women’s exploitation has been occurring throughout history and is therefore amenable to change. Through the use of existentialism women are responsible and are able to change, must reject bad faith to find pleasures of freedom. There are two dualities in social reality:
1. The duality between the subject and the other
2. The duality between man and woman
The dualities are not unrelated, the man appears as the subject whereas the woman is the object
“man’s design is not to repeat himself in time: it is to take control of the instant and mould the future” 97
historically the female has been the victim, or the prey, of the species 125
It is impossible to speak of existentialism without referring to Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism originates from 19th century philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzche however it was fully developed by Sartre and De Beauvoir through their collaborative relationship. The basis of existentialism is to emphasize individual existence, freedom and choice. I think that existentialism would help women rid themselves of imposed social constructs such as that of womanhood because it advocates liberation and equality. In “Existentialism is a Humanism” Sartre states that the first principle of existentialism is that “man is not only what he conceives himself to be, but what which he wills himself to be” therefore each person must embrace their existence and define their own meaning in life as our existences precedes our essence. However this freedom comes with a great weight of responsibility that makes us “a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind” , “our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed” . Although this may seem daunting, I think that it is encouraging because it shows the extent to which we can have an impact on the world and the importance that we each have. In this case, it further empowers women to act boldly rather than being subservient and this will liberate the female stereotype.