ABSTRACT
Simone de Beauvoir is arguably one of the twentieth century’s most significant contributors to feminist theory and politics. This chapter considers the continuing importance of her writing for organization studies, examining major themes and the enduring significance and contribution of her thinking to understanding the persistence of gender inequality in contemporary organizational life. It deals with a discussion of de Beauvoir’s biography, reflecting on the circumstances in which she wrote. Like many other feminist writers, de Beauvoir’s work deliberately blurred boundaries between theory, literature and autobiography, weaving together the philosophical, political and personal. The chapter introduces recurring themes in her best-known non-fiction books, primarily The Second Sex, The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Coming of Age. Writing explicitly about women’s sexuality within a heavily male-dominated intellectual milieu, de Beauvoir was not only politically bold but philosophically so; ‘most disturbing to the defenders of the status quo was the mix of sex and philosophy.
