{"id":284037,"date":"2026-02-26T22:11:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/?p=284037"},"modified":"2026-02-26T22:28:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:28:26","slug":"are-we-still-the-second-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/2026\/02\/26\/are-we-still-the-second-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we still the second sex?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

More than seventy years after the publication of The Second Sex<\/em> (Gallimard, 1949) by Simone de Beauvoir<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0French philosopher, writer, and feminist \u2013 those words continue to resonate. Second, in relation to whom, and according to what criteria? The book, considered one of the first philosophical reflections on the condition of women, posed a question that remains open today: what does it mean to be a woman?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the preface to the 2016 Italian edition (Il Saggiatore), linguist Julia Kristeva<\/strong> observes that de Beauvoir\u2019s text is still deeply relevant, for better and for worse, and adds that “it is up to us to confront it again” \u2013 to return to its philosophical, social, and political roots \u2013 “so that it may be so for the better.” An invitation to distinguish what has changed from what, under new forms, continues to reproduce itself.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world has undoubtedly changed since the 1950s. Women have entered new spaces, claimed rights, and made visible a presence long kept at the margins. The very meaning of the word “feminine” has expanded, no longer tied exclusively to a body or a function, but embracing plural identities and paths. And yet, alongside these openings, deep-rooted imbalances persist: structural inequalities, enduring expectations, roles that evolve more slowly than the narratives that attempt to describe them \u2013 even in places historically associated with women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reflection begins here. Not from the urgency of a new manifesto, but from the desire to understand where we stand. What it means to be a woman today \u2013 in society, at work, in kitchens \u2013 and how models of power, care, and life itself are changing.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The myth of biological inferiority<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The age-old oppression of women is justified in the name of supposed \u2018natural\u2019 inequalities within the human species.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Sontag. On Women<\/em> (Einaudi, 2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For centuries, women\u2019s inferiority was upheld and legitimised by a thesis presented as scientific, which over time has revealed itself to be a cultural construction. De Beauvoir, in fact, had already exposed the appeal to \u201cnature\u201d as a justification for the social order. For a long time, Western biology described woman as the weaker, passive, and derivative sex, interpreting the female body as an imperfect variant of the male one. A narrative that has shaped not only science, but also culture, politics, and the way we think about gender roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is against this legacy that the work of zoologist and science writer Lucy Cooke<\/strong> takes shape. In her book Bitch<\/em> (Edizioni Sonda, 2025), Cooke shows how the (chauvinistic) Victorian culture of the nineteenth century found fertile ground in a science far from neutral, often shaped by distorted readings of Darwinian theory and an openly androcentric gaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through examples drawn from the animal world and evolutionary biology, Cooke dismantles the myth of the female as a secondary variant of the male, restoring her as active, strategic, and central tole in evolutionary processes.<\/mark> She demonstrates that in nature “females are just as promiscuous, competitive, aggressive, dominant, and dynamic as males.” What emerges is a reading of biology that does not deny difference, but frees it from implicit hierarchy, revealing how long science has narrated nature through cultural categories rather than facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is an important realisation: science, often perceived as an absolute truth, is not immune to bias \u2013 systematic distortions of judgment, often unconscious, that shape the way we observe and interpret reality. On the contrary, it is deeply permeated by them. We are all the product of a past, and our cultural constructions inevitably end up shaping what we consider objective. Until, at times, that very framework is called into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literature as a Space of Resistance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is within these same margins \u2013 between what is considered natural and what is in fact culturally constructed \u2013 that literature also finds its place. Not as a neutral space, but as a site of observation and, at times, rupture. Jane Austen<\/strong> is, in every sense, a product of her time: a woman of Georgian England<\/strong>, at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, immersed in a rigidly codified social system, where a woman\u2019s fate was largely confined to marriage, dowry, and respectability. And yet, precisely within that structure, Austen enacts a form of silent rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her heroines do not openly break the rules, but move through them with intelligence, irony, and autonomy of judgment. They think, choose, doubt.<\/mark> They do not reject the world they inhabit, but expose its contradictions from within, revealing how what is presented as natural order is, in fact, a fragile and constructed balance. It is a minimal gesture, almost invisible, and yet it opens a decisive crack: the possibility of imagining a female subjectivity that is not passive, but capable of desire and critical thought. Her quiet yet powerful battle is evident from the very first lines of Pride and Prejudice<\/em> (T. Egerton, 1813), where irony lays bare the social mechanism of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice<\/em> (T. Egerton, 1813)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Austen works by subtle displacement, insinuating doubt within a system that cannot yet be named, with Virginia Woolf<\/strong> that doubt becomes language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are now in the twentieth century. The historical context has shifted, and female reflection can afford to be more explicit. In A Room of One\u2019s Own<\/em> (The Hogarth Press, 1929), Woolf clearly identifies one of the material roots of women\u2019s subordination, writing that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” \u2013 a statement formulated with Jane Austen explicitly in mind (whom Woolf deeply admired), who had to write in shared spaces. That sentence is not a metaphor, but a clear position: emancipation passes through economic independence and, above all, cultural freedom.<\/mark> It is a matter of material conditions, before talent or vocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virginia Woolf. Una stanza tutta per s\u00e9<\/em> (The Hogarth Press, 1929)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female liberation is thus anchored in concrete ground, made of income, space, and time, but also in an idea of intellectual autonomy that is non-negotiable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if Woolf looks to Austen as a symbolic mother, almost all the intellectuals who follow will look to Woolf as an essential reference point in the struggle for gender equality. Among them, Susan Sontag<\/strong> \u2013 American writer, philosopher, and historian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A group of women workers from the British Oil Cake Company in Manchester take a tea break \u2022 George P. Lewis, 1918. Public domain.
Source: Imperial War Museum (via Wikimedia Commons).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Work as emancipation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Between Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag lies a decisive historical shift: the structural entry of women into the workforce. If, until the early twentieth century, women\u2019s labour was often invisible or informal, the two world wars marked an irreversible rupture. With men at the front, women moved into factories, offices, and services, sustaining entire economies and demonstrating abilities that had until then been denied them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the conflicts ended, the return to traditional order attempted to push them back into the domestic sphere, but something had already cracked. In the postwar period, amid economic growth, widespread education, and early civil rights, work became for many women not only a necessity, but a possibility for autonomy. Yet this new presence in the public sphere was not matched by an equally deep redefinition of private roles: the working woman remained, in most cases, also the primary caregiver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There will be no genuine economic liberation for women until they do all the work that men do, on the same terms as men (in pay, performance, risk), and give up the privileges of the mad, the children, and the servants.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Sontag. Sulle donne <\/em>(Einaudi, 2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, her argument is this: entry into public life, without a parallel redistribution of domestic and care labour, has meant only one thing \u2013 a doubling of burdens.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, some countries have attempted to address the issue, introducing paternity leave, more equitable pay policies, protections, and welfare instruments. And yet, we remain far from what de Beauvoir and Sontag had already observed. As writer Benedetta Tobagi<\/strong> notes in the preface to the Italian edition of On Women<\/em>: “Fifty years, and you wouldn\u2019t know it \u2013 unfortunately,” meaning that Sontag\u2019s texts, written in the early 1970s, still retain a startling relevance today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This tension is captured with brutal clarity by Virginie Despentes<\/strong> \u2013 French writer and filmmaker \u2013 in her book King Kong Theory<\/em> (Grasset, 2006), dismantling the unattainable ideal of the perfect woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because the ideal woman, the white woman, seductive but not slutty, well married but not faded, working but not too successful so as not to outshine her man, slim but not obsessed with food, forever young without being disfigured by cosmetic surgery, fulfilled mother but not overwhelmed by nappies and homework, good housewife but not a servant, cultured but less so than a man, this happy white woman they keep shoving under our noses, the one we\u2019re supposed to strive to resemble \u2013 apart from the fact she looks bored out of her mind most of the time \u2013 I\u2019ve never met her anywhere. I don\u2019t think she exists.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virginie Despentes. King Kong Theory<\/em> (Grasset, 2006)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is within this unresolved imbalance between work, recognition, and care that the kitchen becomes an emblematic space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the domestic kitchen to the professional one<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The kitchen has always been considered a female domain. Women at home, women at the stove, women who nourish and care, who hold together the rhythms of family life. A form of everyday knowledge, transmitted, often invisible, taken for granted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the question emerges almost on its own: why, when cooking becomes profession, prestige, career, does that same space transform into predominantly male territory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When cooking ceases to be an act of care and becomes paid labour, public recognition, symbolic power, hierarchies reorganise themselves. What is taken for granted at home becomes technique in restaurants; what was ordinary becomes extraordinary; what was feminine is rewritten in masculine terms.<\/mark> Thus emerges the figure of the chef as authority, genius, leader \u2013 a role historically shaped around structures, languages, and rhythms that excluded those who, for centuries, had cooked without title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this gap lies one of the clearest contradictions of women\u2019s work today: women are authorised to work, but not to command.<\/mark> In a recent interview with three prominent chefs on the international contemporary scene \u2013 Karime L\u00f3pez<\/strong>, Chudaree Debhakam<\/strong>, and Sara Aqel <\/strong>\u2013 the difficulties tied to being a female chef emerged clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first challenge concerns leadership. Finding one\u2019s own voice is not immediate: many recount having felt, at the beginning, the need to assert themselves, to adopt existing models of command, often learned in male-dominated environments. An idea of strength, authority, and control that does not always align with their own way of being in the kitchen. Only over time does it become possible to let go of inherited standards that do not belong to them, and to build a personal style of leadership \u2013 one capable of asserting itself without mimicry: leading a brigade using one\u2019s own voice, in one\u2019s own way, carrying forward a vision without asking for permission, or forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside this, the question of motherhood inevitably emerges, not as an individual limitation, but as a litmus test of the system itself. The question is not whether a woman can be both a mother and a chef, but why a profession like hospitality is still structured as if life \u2013 all of life \u2013 could coincide exclusively with work. As Karime L\u00f3pez observes, the possibility exists and is real. What needs to be rethought instead are organisational models, schedules, expectations: the structures that make certain choices viable only at the cost of disproportionate sacrifices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"\"
Workers pose with carts loaded with sacks of flour in the courtyard of the Rank and Son mills \u2022 George P. Lewis, 1918. Public domain.
Source: Imperial War Museum (via Wikimedia Commons).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Going backward?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, some women appear to want to “go back.” In the United States, the phenomenon of tradwives<\/em> (short for traditional wives) has emerged, as also analysed in Critics at Large<\/em>, the podcast by The New Yorker<\/em>. These are women who embrace a conservative lifestyle and promote, often through social media (primarily TikTok and Instagram), a return to traditional gender roles: the man as the primary breadwinner, the woman devoted to the home, cooking, and caring for the family, often drawing on the aesthetics and imagery of the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This return to domestic life, however, contains a distinctly contemporary element. In many cases, it is not a renunciation of economic autonomy: domestic life is reconfigured as a visible, productive, media space. “Tradition” thus becomes a form of personal entrepreneurship, something that can be monetised. A possibility that remains tied, however, to conditions of economic security \u2013 often guaranteed by stable family income \u2013 without which such a choice could hardly be experienced as free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside these narratives, however, there exists a broader and less spectacularised phenomenon, one that is not mediated or amplified. The decision to devote oneself primarily to the care of one\u2019s family does not stem from nostalgia or passive adherence to traditional roles, but from a conscious choice to help shape future generations. It is real, complex, and essential work, especially in a present marked by social, political, and environmental instability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what happens? It is understandable that many women fully integrated into the workforce \u2013 who see themselves as emancipated \u2013 look at this return with perplexity, if not a certain distrust. They seem to ask: after decades of collective struggle, why go back?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, one does not need to look far to grasp the reasons. If female autonomy has often coincided with a doubling of burdens \u2013 as Sontag observed \u2013 without an equally radical transformation of structures (wages still unequal, opportunities uneven, discrimination persistent), it becomes clear why some choose to step away. <\/mark>Not as an ideological renunciation, but as an act of refusal, as if to say: if this is the price to pay, I’m out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is Sontag, again, who leaves one of the clearest and most necessary messages \u2013 more relevant today than ever: liberation is not only individual. It requires imagination, but also alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The first responsibility of the liberated woman is to lead the fullest, freest, most imaginative life she can. The second is solidarity towards other women.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Sontag. Sulle donne<\/em> (Einaudi, 2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is from this idea of alliance, more than from any single answer, that it becomes possible to observe where these tensions take concrete form, in daily work and in the spaces we inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staying in motion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the end, everything returns there. To the kitchen as both a real and symbolic space: a place of work, care, and power.<\/mark> No longer only the domestic kitchen or the professional one, but a space that today holds both dimensions at once. It is there that many women are redefining, day by day, the very meaning of work \u2013 not through the loud conquest of command, but through a different practice of authority, time, and responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is that same public, visible, recognised space inhabited by the protagonists of Cook_inc. 43: professionals who have built their place through competence, determination, and vision, without renouncing their identity or adapting to models that do not represent them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From philosophy to literature, from work to everyday life, what emerges is a non-linear trajectory, marked by advances, interruptions, and apparent returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no definitive solution, nor an irreversible conquest. There is, rather, a continuous movement, one that must be rethought every day, in individual choices as well as in collective structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virginie Despentes states it openly in the final paragraph of King Kong Theory<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Feminism is a revolution, not a rearrangement of marketing guidelines, not a vague promotion of fellatio or partner-swapping, not just a way to improve supplementary salaries. Feminism is a collective adventure, for women, for men, and for others. A revolution, already well under way. A vision of the world, a choice. It is not about setting women\u2019s small advantages against men\u2019s small gains, but about blowing everything apart.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virginie Despentes. King Kong Theory<\/em> (Grasset, 2006)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So: are we still the second sex? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As long as the question remains necessary, yes. But perhaps that is precisely the point: not to declare ourselves arrived, but to remain in motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, as Despentes concludes: \u201cAnd with this, goodbye girls, have a good journey\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Women mechanics of the Women\u2019s Royal Air Force working on the fuselage of an Avro 504 aircraft \u2022 Unknown attribution, 1918. Public domain.
Source: Imperial War Museum (via Wikimedia Commons).
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More than seventy years after the publication of The Second Sex (Gallimard, 1949) by Simone de Beauvoir \u2013\u00a0French philosopher, writer, and feminist \u2013 those words continue to resonate. Second, in relation to whom, and according to what criteria? The book, considered one of the first philosophical reflections on the condition of women, posed a question […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265299,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"graphics-double-column","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"Siamo ancora il secondo sesso?","_seopress_titles_desc":"Attraverso una riflessione storica, culturale e filosofica sul \u201csecondo sesso\u201d osserviamo\r\nle sue trasformazioni nel tempo per capire a che punto siamo e perch\u00e9 la domanda \"che cosa significa essere donna?\" resta ancora attuale.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"selected_color":"","palette":"{\"media_id\":265299,\"colors\":[[44,44,44],[224,224,224],[104,104,104],[140,140,140],[116,116,116]],\"selected\":\"rgb(224, 224, 224)\",\"gradients\":{\"a1\":[\"#f6feff\",\"#edfcff\",\"#97f0ff\",\"#4fd8eb\",\"#22bccf\",\"#00a0b0\",\"#008391\",\"#004f58\",\"#002b30\",\"#001f24\",\"#001417\"],\"a2\":[\"#f6feff\",\"#edfcff\",\"#cde7ec\",\"#b1cbd0\",\"#96b0b4\",\"#7c959a\",\"#637b80\",\"#334b4f\",\"#10292d\",\"#051f23\",\"#001417\"],\"a3\":[\"#fefbff\",\"#faf8ff\",\"#dae2ff\",\"#bac6ea\",\"#9faace\",\"#8490b2\",\"#6b7697\",\"#3b4664\",\"#192541\",\"#0e1b37\",\"#030f2c\"],\"n1\":[\"#fafdfd\",\"#f8fafa\",\"#e1e3e3\",\"#c4c7c7\",\"#a9acac\",\"#8e9192\",\"#747878\",\"#444748\",\"#232627\",\"#191c1d\",\"#0e1212\"],\"n2\":[\"#f6feff\",\"#f2fbfd\",\"#dbe4e6\",\"#bfc8ca\",\"#a3adaf\",\"#899294\",\"#6f797a\",\"#3f484a\",\"#1e2729\",\"#141d1f\",\"#091214\"],\"error\":[\"#fffbff\",\"#fff8f7\",\"#ffdad6\",\"#ffb4ab\",\"#ff897d\",\"#ff5449\",\"#de3730\",\"#93000a\",\"#540003\",\"#410002\",\"#2d0001\"]}}","authors":"[{\"role\":\"Words by\",\"related\":[{\"postType\":\"collaborator\",\"postTypeLabel\":\"Contributor\",\"title\":\"Claudia van den Berg Morelli\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/collaboratore\/claudia-van-den-berg-morelli\/\",\"ID\":144596,\"value\":144596,\"label\":\"Claudia van den Berg Morelli\",\"thumbnail\":false}],\"title\":\"\",\"unique_id\":\"MTc3MDYzNzM5Njk3N194ZTA5azcxZnQ5al8wLjQ4NzYwNTE5ODU2MDQwNjQ=\"}]","magazine_id":"283561","footnotes":""},"categories":[1620],"tags":[757,2263,2437,2438,2439],"location":[],"class_list":["post-284037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-donne","tag-filosofia","tag-riflessione","tag-secondo-sesso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284037"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284484,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284037\/revisions\/284484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284037"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookinc.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=284037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}