Beauvoir's Argumentative Analysis

Women are both treasured and reviled for their reproductive function, and de Beauvoir explains that one of the central problems of the female situation is the difficulty of reconciling woman’s reproductive capacity with her productive capacity. Her productive capacity includes her ability to participate in labor or otherwise contribute to the economy of her society. On closer inspection, de Beauvoir finds that reproduction and production are not mutually exclusive. A woman’s reproductive capacity should not stop her from fulfilling a position in society beyond the home. Woman is neither exclusively a worker nor exclusively a womb.
Throughout history, woman has been enslaved to her reproductive function. Her life to the present has been an uninterrupted