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What is a woman?

That's not a question that has puzzled people for much of human history. But in the 20th century, some feminists, most notably the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, drew a distinction between female biology and what it is to be a woman.

Women are not born women, thought de Beauvoir.

Society makes them so.

But this issue has been further complicated by a relatively new debate.

How should we categorise trans people, those who have a gender identity that differs from

their sex? It's a question that has caused a bitter rift among feminists,

with one faction arguing that just identifying as a woman is not enough to make you a woman. Here's Amir Shrinivarsen.

Amir Shrinivarsen. Welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thanks very much.

The topic we're going to focus on is, what is a woman? Now for many people it's very obvious what a woman is. What is the

philosophical question there? I think you're right so it's fair to say that for most of human history,

the question, what is a woman,

would just seem like a silly question,

because the answer would have seemed very obvious.

A woman is an adult human female. A woman is the member of the

human species who has ovaries, who produces eggs, who nurses young, who gives birth to young, and so on. So the reigning

assumption has been that woman is a biological category. In 1949 the French

philosopher Simone de Beauvoir published a book called The Second Sex,

...