Evelyn and Simone were contemporary, however the political, social and cultural context in which each of them were immersed were distinct. Evelyn was a daughter of a Christian family who shared the same faith as her family (Clarke, 2006, p.15) while Simone, who experienced the dilemma between the catholic faith of her mother and the intellectual scepticism of her father (Beauvoir, 1959) opted for the disbelief. In addition to this distinctiveness between the two women, their social networks were also quite different. While Evelyn’s close friends were artists Simone’s relationships were strongly determined by her political positions. “Simone de Beauvoir belonged to the first generation of European women to be educated on a par with men” (Moi, 1994, p.1), on the other hand Evelyn was one of the few women working officially as war artist but her work was mainly focused on other women the activities of the Women’s Land Army (Windsor, 2004). Benazir was born in another time, when Western women had achieved much more rights, but her political and religious context were still limiting for women. For this reason, I believe that her achievements, even half of a century later, were also pioneering. Because every life is singular, comparisons are not possible. In view of this, the next sub-sections present some aspects of these women’s lives as a means to analyse them without weighing their similarities and dissimilarities, or the possible motivations behind the choices made. The objective is just look at the differences in each individual life story in order to capture the (implicit) socio-historic-political aspects around them. The following table 1 shows a summary of the parallel aspects in the lives of Evelyn, Simone and Benazir.

Table 1: Three distinctive and similar women

To be continued

Evelyn, Simone and Benazir: singular women, unique biographies [the complete series]:

Biography in three genres: an introduction
Evelyn, Simone and Benazir: Singular women, distinctive biographies

• In the name of the father
• Faith and disbelief
• Education
• Marriage: three distinctive choices
• Before a strong woman there was a stronger man

Autobiography of a daughter

Is it a hindsight[ful] biography? Looking at obituaries and other sources

Conclusion

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