Simone De Beauvoir "Intro to The Second Sex"- Women 'do' say We

     
     While Hartman attributes feminist’s failure to make progress in their struggle for liberation to Marxism, Simone De Beauvoir argues that the problem lies in women’s negligence to say “we”.  According to De Beauvoir, gender discrimination persists until today because women’s subordination to men has long been considered as a ‘default’ and hence is overlooked. Though the women’s need for men and men’s need for women are equally urgent and important, men still acts as the oppressor. Despite the unfairness, De Beauvoir believes that the system persists because women lack solidarity to fight against it. Yet she recognizes that organizing themselves is not practical because women are dispersed among the males and are bound to housework, economic condition and social standing. 

      By no means to undermine De Beauvoir, however, seeing how women are taking bigger parts it the public affairs these days, women actually do seem to say “we”.  For example, recently, women in Cairo united in struggle against the conservative religious leaders who strictly excluded them from political participation (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/01/2012117113758961894.html). Despite the violence and intensity of the government oppression, women participated in the street uprisings, asserting that “we (women) can’t always be pictured as victims all the time” (Bakr).  Perhaps women may have been less mobile than those of today when De Beauvoir wrote the manifesto. However, it has now become an undeniable fact that women are beginning to find means to organize into an entity and say “we” in their fight for liberty.