Comment: “Woman has always been man’s dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality.” (Simone de Beauvoir) (2009)
The line comes from the Introduction to Simone de Beauvoir‘s The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949), in H. M. Parshley’s 1953 English translation; the French original says woman has been, if not man’s slave, at least his vassal. It is a historical verdict serving as the premise of an existentialist question: what produces so general a subordination, and why have women not overturned it?
Where the claim sits in Beauvoir’s thought
- Woman as the Other. Humanity is defined as male, and woman only in relation to man: He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other. Otherness, a category taken from G. W. F. Hegel, is normally reciprocal; between the sexes it has frozen into a one-way hierarchy.
- Becoming, not being. Following Jean-Paul Sartre‘s maxim that existence precedes essence, she argues that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Femininity is a situation made by upbringing, myth, law and economy, so dependence is historical, not biological destiny.
- Immanence and transcendence. Freedom is realised through projects that go beyond the given. Women are held in immanence — the repetitive maintenance of life through housework and reproduction — while men claim transcendence.
- Why no revolt. Unlike the proletariat, women live dispersed among the males, tied to fathers and husbands more firmly than to other women, so they cannot say “we”. She adds complicity: dependence offers protection and escape from the anguish of freedom — existentialist bad faith built into women’s situation.
The strength of the claim
- It turns an apparently natural fact into a political one, the ground on which the sex–gender distinction and Kate Millett‘s patriarchy were built.
- The generalisation survives the evidence. The WEF Global Gender Gap Index 2026 puts the world about 120 years from parity. India ranks 131st of 145, with economic participation at 41.2% and only 74 women among 543 MPs. Even matrilineal Khasi society in Meghalaya has traditionally kept women out of its village councils: matriliny is not matriarchy.
Critiques
- A universal woman. bell hooks (Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 1984) charged that feminism written from privileged white women’s position mistook their confinement for every woman’s. Black women had long worked outside the home.
- Sex and the body. Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) argues that Beauvoir keeps a pre-social “sex” beneath gender and a mind–body dualism. Difference feminists object that she makes male transcendence the ideal and treats maternity as a burden.
- Caste and class. Uma Chakravarti‘s brahmanical patriarchy (1993) reads upper-caste women’s seclusion as a mechanism of caste purity. Sharmila Rege argued (1998) that Dalit women “talk differently” because caste and labour shape their subordination. A secluded upper-caste wife and a Dalit farm labourer are both unfree, but differently.
- Agency. “Always” and “never” flatten history and resistance, from Savitribai Phule‘s schools for girls to the Chipko women.
Conclusion
The statement holds as a structural generalisation and fails as a uniform description. Its lasting value is that it makes subordination explicable and therefore alterable; Beauvoir’s own remedy was economic independence and collective change. Read with caste and class, the verdict stands: male dominance has been close to constant, but its form varies with which woman is subordinated.