"One is not born a woman, but becomes one"
About this Quote
De Beauvoir’s line lands like a quiet demolition charge: it takes what’s treated as “natural” and reveals it as a project, imposed and policed over time. The phrasing matters. “Born” evokes biology, inevitability, a sealed fate. “Becomes” flips the frame to process - social training, repetition, reward and punishment - the slow manufacture of “woman” as a role. It’s not merely a claim about identity; it’s a diagnosis of power. If femininity is made, then someone is doing the making, and someone benefits from the final product.
Written in the aftermath of World War II and published in 1949 in The Second Sex, the sentence arrives when Europe is renegotiating citizenship, labor, and family life. Women had stepped into wartime work and public responsibility, only to be nudged back toward domestic “normalcy.” De Beauvoir’s target is that rollback masquerading as tradition: the idea that womanhood is destiny rather than design.
The subtext is existentialist and unsparing. For de Beauvoir, a person isn’t born with a ready-made essence; we are pushed into meanings by institutions, myths, and expectations. “Woman,” then, is not just a demographic category but a social position constructed as “the Other” - defined relative to man, kept in a state of managed dependence. The line endures because it doesn’t ask for sympathy; it demands a new accounting. If gender is something one becomes, it can also be unlearned, resisted, remade.
Written in the aftermath of World War II and published in 1949 in The Second Sex, the sentence arrives when Europe is renegotiating citizenship, labor, and family life. Women had stepped into wartime work and public responsibility, only to be nudged back toward domestic “normalcy.” De Beauvoir’s target is that rollback masquerading as tradition: the idea that womanhood is destiny rather than design.
The subtext is existentialist and unsparing. For de Beauvoir, a person isn’t born with a ready-made essence; we are pushed into meanings by institutions, myths, and expectations. “Woman,” then, is not just a demographic category but a social position constructed as “the Other” - defined relative to man, kept in a state of managed dependence. The line endures because it doesn’t ask for sympathy; it demands a new accounting. If gender is something one becomes, it can also be unlearned, resisted, remade.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe), 1949 — original French: "On ne naît pas femme : on le devient." Common English rendering: "One is not born a woman, but becomes one." |
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