The Simone de Beauvoir Prize (french: Prix Simone de Beauvoir pour la liberté des femmes) is an international

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

prize for women's freedom, awarded since 2008 to individuals or groups fighting for

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...

and opposing breaches of human rights. It is named after the

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

and

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...

, known for her 1949

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

treatise ''

The Second Sex ''The Second Sex'' (french: Le Deuxième Sexe, link=no) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women in the present society as well as throughout all of history ...

''. The prize was founded by

Julia Kristeva Julia Kristeva (; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, bg, Юлия Стоянова Кръстева; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has ...

on 9 January 2008, the 100th anniversary of de Beauvoir's birth. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir and Pierre Bras are the head of the Simone de Beauvoir prize committee. According to the organizers:

The prize is awarded every year to a remarkable personality whose courage and thoughts are examples for everybody, in the spirit of Simone de Beauvoir who wrote: "The ultimate end, for which human beings should aim, is liberty, the only capable hing to establish every end on."

Recipients

* 2008 –

Taslima Nasreen Taslima Nasrin (born 25 August 1962) is a Bangladeshi-Swedish writer, physician, feminist, secular humanist, and activist. She is known for her writing on women's oppression and criticism of religion. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

i writer, and

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ayaan Hirsi Ali (; ; Somali: ''Ayaan Xirsi Cali'':'' Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī;'' born Ayaan Hirsi Magan, ar, أيان حرسي علي / ALA-LC: ''Ayān Ḥirsī 'Alī'' 13 November 1969) is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politicia ...

, Dutch feminist, writer and politician. * 2009 –

One Million Signatures One Million Signatures for the Repeal of Discriminatory Laws (Persian: ), also known as Change for Equality, is a campaign by women in Iran to collect one million signatures in support of changing discriminatory laws against women in their coun ...

, a campaign by the

Women's rights movement in Iran The Iranian Women's Rights Movement (Persian: جنبش زنان ایران), is the social movement for women's rights of the women in Iran. The movement first emerged after the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1910, the year in which the f ...

, demanding changes to discriminatory laws in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. * 2010 –

Ai Xiaoming Ai Xiaoming (; born 1953) is a Chinese documentary filmmaker and political activist. She is also a scholar of women's and public issues, and former professor at Sun Yat-sen University. Ai was born in Wuhan in 1953, and has spent most of her adult l ...

, Chinese videographer and professor at

Sun Yat-sen University Sun Yat-sen University (, abbreviated SYSU and colloquially known in Chinese as Zhongda), also known as Zhongshan University, is a national key public research university located in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It was founded in 1924 by and nam ...

, and

Jianmei Guo Guo Jianmei (; born March 27, 1960) is a Chinese lawyer, human rights activist and director of a women's legal aid NGO. In 2005, she was one of 1000 women put forward as nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. Guo is the recipient of the 2010 Simone D ...

, Chinese lawyer and founder of the Women's Law Studies and Legal Aid Center at the

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...

School of Law. * 2011 –

Lyudmila Ulitskaya Lyudmila Evgenyevna Ulitskaya (russian: link=no, Людмила Евгеньевна Улицкая, born February 21, 1943) is an internationally acclaimed modern Russian novelist and short-story writer who, in 2014, was awarded the prestigious A ...

, Russian novelist and civil rights activist * 2012 – Association tunisienne des femmes démocrates * 2013 –

Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai ( ur, , , pronunciation: ; born 12 July 1997), is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pak ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

student A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementar ...

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

ger and

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

. * 2014 –

Michelle Perrot Michelle Perrot (born 18 May 1928, Paris) is a French historian, and Professor emeritus of Contemporary History at the Paris Diderot University. She won the 2009 Prix Femina Essai. Life She has worked on the history of labor movements, and stud ...

, French historian * 2015 –

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...

* 2016 – Mayor of

Lampedusa Lampedusa ( , , ; scn, Lampidusa ; grc, Λοπαδοῦσσα and Λοπαδοῦσα and Λοπαδυῦσσα, Lopadoûssa; mt, Lampeduża) is the largest island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The ''comune'' of L ...

Guisi Nicolini for her involvement with the integration of immigrants on the island. * 2017 – Polish association 'Save Women'.

Barbara Nowacka Barbara Anna Nowacka (born 10 May 1975) is a Polish politician. A left activist in Labour United, and later in Your Movement, in October 2015 she became leader of the United Left coalition for the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, bringing tog ...

accepted the prize. * 2018 –

Aslı Erdoğan Aslı Erdoğan (born 8 March 1967) is a prize-winning Turkish writer, author, human rights activist, and columnist for ''Özgür Gündem'' and formerly for ''Radikal,'' ex political prisoner, particle physicist. Her second novel has been publishe ...

, Turkish writer * 2019 – Sara García Gross, Salvadoran activist

References

External links

* (in French) {{Authority control Human rights awards Women's rights Simone de Beauvoir Awards established in 2008 2008 establishments in France