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Who really said it

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman

Written by Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986 · French existentialist philosopher, writer & feminist theorist
Verified In copyright

The line opens Volume II of Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe (1949): “On ne naît pas femme : on le devient.” This exact English wording is H. M. Parshley’s 1953 translation (Alfred A. Knopf); the 2009 Borde & Malovany-Chevallier translation renders it “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman,” without the article.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949), Vol. II, opening line — trans. H. M. Parshley, 1953

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Éditions Gallimard (French original) and the H. M. Parshley translation / Alfred A. Knopf (English wording)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe), Vol. II: “L’expérience vécue”
First published
1949, Éditions Gallimard (Paris)
Translation
H. M. Parshley, 1953 (Alfred A. Knopf) — source of the famous English wording
Location
Opening sentence of Part I (“Formation”), ch. 1, “Childhood”

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature.

The opening two sentences of Volume II in H. M. Parshley’s 1953 translation.

The Second Sex — publication and translation history (Wikipedia)

How we verified this

In copyright

The French original appeared in 1949 and the famous English wording comes from H. M. Parshley’s 1953 translation — both well after 1931, so the passage is in copyright in the United States (Beauvoir’s estate via Gallimard; the English via Knopf/Random House).

Fact-check

The words are Beauvoir’s — but the English is a translator’s

The attribution to Beauvoir is correct. The subtlety worth knowing is that Beauvoir wrote in French, and the celebrated English sentence is a translation whose exact wording has changed over time.

H. M. Parshley (translator), 1953 translation

Beauvoir wrote “On ne naît pas femme : on le devient” in 1949. The familiar English “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” is H. M. Parshley’s 1953 rendering, not Beauvoir’s own English.

Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, 2009 variant

The 2009 complete translation deliberately drops the article — “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman” — to signal that Beauvoir means woman as a constructed category, per the discussion of the two translations.

The thought and the French are genuinely Beauvoir’s, opening Volume II of The Second Sex (1949); the exact English line quoted everywhere is Parshley’s 1953 translation.

Context

Why the line mattered

Opening the volume on women’s “lived experience,” the sentence distilled Beauvoir’s central claim: that femininity is produced by culture and situation, not fixed by biology. It became a founding statement for later distinctions between biological sex and socially constructed gender.

Because it is so compressed, the line travels well — and often travels detached from its source, which is why its status as a 1953 translation of a 1949 French text is so frequently lost.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Simone de Beauvoiren.wikiquote.org

Sourced entry pairing the French original with the Parshley English wording
The Second Sexen.wikipedia.org

Overview of the book, its 1949 original and the 1953 vs 2009 translations
The Second Sex: Quotes Explainedsparknotes.com

Scholarly gloss on the meaning of the opening line of Volume II
Becoming a Woman: Beauvoir on Female Embodimentphilosophynow.org

Essay analysing the line and its sex/gender implications

The author

About Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir

1908–1986 · French existentialist philosopher, writer & feminist theorist

Simone de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, novelist and essayist, and a central figure of 20th-century feminist thought. Her 1949 study Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) argued that “woman” is a social construction rather than a biological destiny, a thesis compressed into its most quoted sentence. She won the Prix Goncourt in 1954 for her novel Les Mandarins.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), Vol. II, ch. 1 — from Le Deuxième Sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949).

MLA (9th ed.)

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley, Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.

APA (7th ed.)

Beauvoir, S. de. (1953). The second sex (H. M. Parshley, Trans.). Alfred A. Knopf. (Original work published 1949)

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/one-is-not-born-but-rather-becomes-a-woman

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