Dr. Claudia Cabello Hutt

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Associate Professor, 2017

The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir

I read this book as an undergraduate literature student in Chile in an academic environment still shaped by the brutality and conservative ideology of a long dictatorship, where very little space was offered to reflect on culture and literature from a perspective of gender. Simone de Beauvoir's historical analysis of systematic and institutionalized violence and discrimination against women had an enormous impact on my academic trajectory and my life. The basic notion of gender as a cultural construction and how these set of ideas affect women's minds and physical well-being changed my understanding of the world. This book also allowed me to better grasp the infinite damaging consequences of inequality and oppression.

View title in library catalog