Simone de Beauvoir spent fourteen months between 1946 and 1949 researching and writing The Second Sex. She published the work in two volumes titled Facts and Myths, and Lived Experience.
Simone de Beauvoir argues that man serves as the default human while woman becomes the Other relative to him. Her conclusion states that values cannot be based on physiology alone but must instead be viewed through ontological economic social and physiological contexts.
The Vatican placed The Second Sex on its List of Prohibited Books known as Index Librorum Prohibitorum because of its controversial arguments against traditional gender roles. The book remained banned until the policy of prohibition itself was abolished in 1966.
The first French edition of The Second Sex sold around 22,000 copies within a single week of its publication. This rapid commercial success signaled immediate public interest despite the controversial nature of her arguments.
A full Castilian Spanish translation of The Second Sex finally emerged in 1998 after decades of restriction. The Spanish-language translation printed in Argentina faced banning in Francoist Spain in 1955 before this release.