The Way Barbara Risman Became an Academic

As I have said in the Biography Section, Barbara Risman's education was very much supported by her religion, Judaism. She went to Northwestern University and got her BA in sociology in 1976, and went to the University of Washington for both her Masters and PH D, which she received in 1978 and then in 1983. While in Northwestern University, she was a feminist activist. However, when the Equal Rights Amendment went down after she was striking and action on behalf of her feminist ideals, she was completely dumbfounded. She decided that she could not change the way things were in society if she did not understand "how it is socially constructed and sustained." She desperately wanted to understand the women who could act "against their own equality." After this incident, she changed her major to sociology without having any prior experience in it. It is then that she met a great role model to her, Arlene Kaplan Daniels. She became her editorial assistant for journal Social Problems, and this is where she learned that she could "make a living thinking, writing, and teaching about the social problem of inequality."

She says later that she is happy that she has the "good fortune" to be able to earn her living that way today. Early in her sociology career, there was a pressure to write articles rather than to teach to the public. Now, however, she says that public sociology is becoming more legitimate among the discipline. She says that her career shows that it is possible to do both; she writes for both scholars and popular audiences. She has worked as a pre-doctoral Teaching Associate at the University of Washington (1982-86), an assistant professor of sociology, founding director of women's studies, administrative intern, director of graduate programs, and associate professor at North Carolina State University (1984-05), and is presently the head of the sociology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago.