If you’re curious to know, she argues, unlike Engels in his Origin of the Family, that the rise of private property and the social relations of production are a useful yet insufficient explanation for women’s servitude.

According to her, the women’s material (physiological) incapacity in the production process constitute an inherent disadvantage only if viewed through a certain perspective (e.g. historical materialism). In other words, women’s alterity isn’t intrinsic to her biological sex, but rather the consequence of the imperialist human consciousness which seeks to objectively accomplish its sovereignty.

Basically, the classical doctrines of Marxism are based on a modernist tradition which seeks to uncover “objective truths” which conflict with de Beauvoir’s deconstructionist portrayal of women’s conditioning in the West.