Judith Lorber

Judith Lorber was born in Brooklyn New York, where she attended public schools. She graduated from Queens College of CUNY in 1952, and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from New York University in 1971. She began developing and teaching courses in sociology and women’s studies in 1972, and taught at Fordham University in the Bronx, Brooklyn College, and the CUNY Graduate School until her retirement from teaching in 1995. In 1987, she became the founding editor of Gender & Society, the official publication of Sociologists for Women in Society. The main focus of Dr. Lorber’s work has been social construction — the idea that people produce their identities and statuses, and at the same time reproduce the structure and constraints of their social world. Her last book on gender and health care, Gender and the Social Construction of Illness, was published in 1997; a second edition, which she co-authored with Lisa Jean Moore, was published in 2002. She also co-authored Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives with Prof. Moore (2007, 2011). Her work on women physicians culminated in Women Physicians: Careers, Status, and Power (1984), as well as a series of papers published from 1981 to 1987. Other works include Breaking the Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change, Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics, and Paradoxes of Gender.