a Book

In the previous installment I presented a summary of the history of woman as Simone de Beauvoir recounts it in her book "The Second Sex," where she showed that it is a long history of enslavement. After the author finishes with the historical side, she proceeds to examine the present condition, and says: woman in the West has been somewhat emancipated thanks to the amendments made to the laws that concern her. But — despite this — woman has not been fully emancipated, because society does not make her man's equal even if the laws do, and because there are traditions, judgments, and social institutions that must be changed if the desired freedom is to be reached.

What are the tasks that woman has performed, and still performs to this day?

The author answers this question as follows:

Housework and motherhood and what attaches to them, such as nursing and the raising of children; assisting the man in some of the work of the field or the factory; holding gatherings of amusement and appearing in social clubs. Beyond this, some women took, and still take, prostitution as a profession, or become the favorites of kings and rich men, or delight men with dancing and song. And some of them have made up for the trivial condition in which society confined them with various forms of revolt or reaction. Among these rebels against their condition are: the egoist, who worships her own self and gives herself over to adornment, domination, and the love of display; the lover, who melts away into the one she loves; and the mystic nun, who loses herself in the love of God. The author reviews these occupations or functions one by one and gives her opinion of each:

Housework — in the author's view — does not fill a woman's life nor grant her contentment and sufficiency, for it is repetitive, tedious work, with no creation in it and no renewal. The whole of it is cleaning, wiping, and sweeping. Creative activity is reserved to the man, who builds the house, makes the furniture, plows the earth, gathers the harvest, invents the machines, and devises the vessels the woman uses. Among the merits of the modern age is that, through its various inventions, it has lightened woman's household labors to a great degree and prepared for her the means of varying her work outside the house, just as it has compelled the man to help her with the housework when necessary.

As for motherhood, it is woman's traditional

function; but — says Simone de Beauvoir — it is a mistake to consider motherhood alone a function sufficient to fill the emptiness of a woman's life. "Parents who want children from a selfish motive are mistaken, for children are not their parents' property, to be disposed of at their whim; nor are they a means of appropriation or a compensation for repressed dreams and thwarted hopes; nor are they an instrument of amusement and play, or of boasting and vainglory. Cornelia erred when she displayed her children to the women and said, boasting: 'These are my treasures'... Many women become the slaves of their children in order to fill the emptiness of their own souls; their excessive tenderness and constant anxiety prevent the child from growing independently, and they dominate him... The woman fit for motherhood is the cultivated woman, calm of nerve and full of energy, who divides her time between work in the house and work outside it; for through work she forgets herself and does not make her body the axis of her life, and she is the fitter to raise her child and teach him the strength and firmness that mark her, because she does not make of him the object of a sick love and an excessive attachment. But since it is difficult for the wife to reconcile motherhood and work, it is incumbent upon governments to establish proper institutions to look after the working mother, to care for the children in her absence, and to prepare the right atmosphere for her to continue at her work..."

Then the author speaks of woman's role in the salons, in the clubs, in visits and assemblies. She points to the time and money woman spends on adornment and on the sewing of the clothes required for parties and gatherings, and adds: had woman sufficient work and an independent personality, she would not give herself over to the idle, frivolous life, full of luxury, affectation, and hypocrisy.

As for prostitution, it is an ancient profession of women. Its chief causes are the scarcity of work and the abundance of misery. Statistics have shown that half of all prostitutes were first servant girls, come from village milieus where honor is not hedged about with all the means of preservation after the bour-geois fashion. The chief means of combating it are

the combating of poverty and ignorance, and that every woman should have a respectable occupation that enables her to earn her living and keeps her from trafficking in her body and arriving at the calamitous end that awaits the prostitute.

Dancing and singing were of old the