SE Academic Review 2023

ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD 64

8 .

‘Biology alone cannot provide an answer to the question that concerns us: why is woman the Other?’. A critical assessment of

this claim. By Josephine Page

Simone de Beauvoir firmly believes that biology is not the sole answer to woman being ‘the Other’. To begin, I would just like to say that what she means by ‘the Other’ is the fact that women are defined in opposition to men. In this essay I will be exploring the role of biological and psychoanalytical theories in finding an answer to this question, and Beauvoir’s reasoning behind her belief in their failure to provide a valid solution. I will ultimately conclude that Beauvoir is right to argue that biology cannot be the sole cause of this problem.