In 1945, women in France were granted the right to vote. The inclusion of women in the political and social future of France had long been taken up by women activists across France, dating back to the founding of First Republic, in which Olympe de Gouges in The Declaration of the Rights of Woman denounced the customary treatment of women as second class and argued that women should be included in France’s future. In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir followed in the footsteps of de Gouges with The Second Sex. The title is a criticism of women being categorized as the secondary or inferior sex. De Beauvoir was writing during the Fourth Republic of France, a period defined as the French restructuring and rebuilding of the republic after the tumultuous years of World War II, which brought about the collapse of the Third Republic. De Beauvoir’s work is helpful for understanding the conditions of women not only in France but around the world. Women after World War II were demanding greater inclusion in political and social affairs, challenging the historical arguments that women were inherently inferior to men and therefore could never be equal, paving the way for the future of the feminist movement.