Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher in the tradition of existentialism. Born in Paris in 1908, she came of age alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, and the two worked together, starting in 1945, to edit a monthly review titled “Le Temps Modernes.” Her book-length essay, 1949’s “The Second Sex,” attempted to tell human history from a feminist perspective. In it, she explores the idea that women have traditionally been viewed in opposition to men, and leans on biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism to expose the myth of female inferiority. To this day, the work is considered a pillar of feminist literature, exposing the unhappiness born of inequality so that we might work as a society to correct it.