"Women, You Have Her to Thank for Everything!"

"And yet even Beauvoir sensed that there was something not quite right about her revolutionary thesis, 'one is not born a woman, one becomes one.'
"Twenty years after 'The Second Sex' was first published, author Suzanne Lilar wrote a brilliant critique of this groundbreaking work of modern feminism, an article that at least persuaded Beauvoir to admit to the genetic, hormonal and anatomical differences between the sexes. Nevertheless, she remained steadfast, and rightfully so, in her conviction that culture shapes our perception of femininity, a perception that constantly fluctuates between idealization and demonization."

One hundred years after Simone de Beauvoir's birth, Romain Leick in Spiegel Online looks back on the life of the French writer and philosopher.