Simone de Beauvoir
(1908 - 1986)
Born into an upper-middle-class Parisian family in 1908, Simone de Beauvoir taught philosophy in French lycées from 1931 to 1943 before publishing The Ethics of Ambiguity in 1947 and The Second Sex in 1949. Having supported the student demonstrations in May 1968, she wrote about society’s indifference to the elderly in The Coming of Age, in which she pointed out, “The aged do not form a body with any economic strength whatsoever and have no possible way of enforcing their rights.”