Summary: "Woman is not born but made." This sentence in philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s magisterial The Second Sex (1949) means that there’s nothing natural about the fact that 50% of humanity has been oppressed by the other half for millennia. There’s nothing natural about the secondary status of women as either inferior or as assistants, supporters, care-givers, or objects of reverence, fascination, lust and desire. I spoke with Kate Stimpson, one of the founders of women's studies in US higher ed.
