Simone de Beauvoir's Concept of Otherness and Contemporary Gender Politics: An Existential Feminist Perspective

Since its publication in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has remained one of the foundational works of feminist thought, profoundly shaping debates on gender, freedom, and social inequality. Although Beauvoir's existential feminism has been widely examined within twentieth-century feminist theory, limited attention has been paid to its analytical relevance for understanding contemporary forms of institutional and technological patriarchy. This article examines the extent to which Beauvoir's concepts of otherness, freedom, immanence, transcendence, and anti-essentialism remain applicable to twenty-first-century gender politics. Employing an interpretive qualitative research design and a comparative case study approach, the study analyses four institutional contexts: the legal regulation of women's bodily autonomy in Iran following Mahsa Amini's death in custody, the systematic exclusion of women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, algorithmic discrimination in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and gender inequalities reproduced through digital platforms. Building on Beauvoir's existential philosophy and engaging with contemporary feminist scholarship—including Butler's theory of gender performativity, Crenshaw's intersectionality, recognition theory, and digital feminism—the article develops the Contemporary Otherness Framework (COF) as an integrative analytical model. Rather than arguing that patriarchal domination has disappeared through modernization and digitalization, the study demonstrates how it has adapted to new political, legal, and technological conditions. The findings suggest that while the institutional forms of gender inequality have evolved, the underlying dynamics of otherness, unequal recognition, and constrained freedom identified by Beauvoir continue to shape women's experiences. By bridging existential feminism with contemporary debates on digital governance and AI, the article contributes to feminist political theory and provides a comparative framework for analysing the evolving institutional architecture of patriarchal power in the digital age.