Born in Cootamundra in New South Wales, Australia, Genevieve Lloyd studied philosophy at the University of Sydney and then at Oxford. Her DPhil, awarded in 1973, was on Time and Tense. From 1967 until 1987 she lectured at the Australian National University, and it was during this period that she developed her most influential ideas and wrote The Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy, which was published in 1984. In 1987 she was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales and was the first female professor of philosophy appointed in Australia.

Lloyd's contribution to feminist thought owes a good deal to Simone de Beauvoir. This is despite the fact that in The Man of Reason she is critical of Beauvoir's adoption of the pursuit of transcendence as the ideal of human excellence. Lloyd argues in this book that the historical...