The immediate occasion for the conference was the 70th anniversary of the publication of the essay by Simon de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex” (1949).
The conference was attended by 17 participants from Belarus, Lithuania, France, USA, Cameroon, Sweden, Finland. The topics of the reports were devoted to both the analysis of texts and the activities of Simone de Beauvoir in the public sphere and politics, as well as to the various challenges faced by the feminist movement in the 21st century. The conference was originally conceived as interdisciplinary: the “post-feminist state” was analyzed by historians, political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, theater experts and art activists.
A special guest was Claudine Monteil, a French writer and diplomat who personally knew Simon de Beauvoir. Claudine Monteil gave a lecture “Evidence of the relevance of engagement by Simone de Beauvoir in the 21st century” at the French Institute, as well as a public lecture at the VU IIRPS on the topic “Feminism and / in diplomacy”.
