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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 bullyi

ng 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.”