French existentialist thinker Simone de Bouvoir’s 1949 book, The Second Sex, is considered one of the most important feminist texts in history. Recently, the unabridged version was translated into English for the first time. DNA caught up with translators Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier at the recently concluded Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival. Excerpts from an interview: How did you come about translating a book that is over 60 years old?In Paris, at a conference celebrating 50 years of the book in 1999, we found out that the book still didn’t have a complete translation. The first translation left out whole chunks of the book. In addition, it made a lot of mistakes about the vocabulary of existentialism. But no publisher was willing to take on another translation until 2004, when a newspaper article pointed out these problems. What do you, as translators, do when you disagree with the author?Shelia: There was not much that I didn’t agree with. It’s a book of philosophy that gives you incredible insights into the lives of women. Constance: The book is about the underlying reasons why society has created women as secondary and inferior to men. Its basis is scientific — it uses literature, medical research, psychoanalysis, etc, to understand the socialisation of sexes. Simone says that a woman can never be Vincent Van Gogh or a Franz Kafka. Does this still hold true?S: The point for Simone, I believe, was that until women control their reproductive cycles, they will be mired in repetitive tasks and can’t transcend to that other plane of equality. Men think the world. Women have not been able to think the world because they were bound to the home. Women have made a lot of progress since then. So, is the book still relevant?S: Yes. We still live in a patriarchal world. Look at the corporate setting — the disparity in wages is enormous. C: A girl child is still brought up as a girl. Girls are made to feel by their mothers that if they aren’t good at running a household, they aren’t good enough. For instance, even a businesswoman still worries about domestic chores like ironing her clothes at night. Girls are brought up as girls. Can you explain?Boys are allowed to be aggressive and competitive in their games. Girls, on the other hand, are taught to be gentle and are not allowed to be competitive. Like the adage: Man kills; woman settles for giving life. Simone du Bouvoir has asked in her book why one is better than the other. Why is the hunter better than the hunted? Aren’t both equally important? Can parents consciously avoid bringing up their kids this way? C: I have an example: My husband had his own patriarchal notions. Until he had girls of his own. Having daughters made him realise that he never wants them to depend on their husbands for anything. A man of his generation is reasonable enough to change the way he thinks. S: The key, of course, is education. But not regular education. For instance, there’s a move to bring back the all-girls schools. In co-ed schools, what happens is girls do very well until puberty. Then boys start excelling and teachers start taking more interest in the boys. Moving back to an all-girls school format might help decrease this disparity. But it’s not just girls, boys too must be educated about equality. What are the important lessons in the book for women today?C: Women have to be careful of two things. One, that they’re fighting for equality — equality and justice. They have to be careful about avoiding narcissism, of thinking more about what they want to be than what they really are. Thanks to advertising and films, an image has been created for women - to be sexy, and that appearances are necessary. We (Sheila and I) have been through the whole hippie era in the ’60s and ’70s, and we experimented — it was part of finding our identities. Yes, we do comb our hair neatly and wear skirts, but we don’t necessarily adhere to what we’re expected to look like.

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Second, they have to refrain from becoming ‘accomplices’ — going with what’s set out for them just because it’s easier. Women work so hard to get that equality. And then they realise that they’re tired of it and would like nothing better than to take their husband’s money and go shopping. Simone de Bouvoir lived by everything she wrote, never marrying, and having a string of sexual relations with both men and women. Have you been influenced by her life choices? C: Oh, yes! I’m very inspired by her life. She was true to her ideas of freedom. But I’m also a bit puzzled. Her ideas about sexuality were a bit ambiguous. Men loved her and she loved men. And though she did have a lot of female lovers, she never called herself a lesbian. I believe that by denying herself the label, she denied an aspect of her own self.