ABSTRACT
Myra Marx Ferree, professor of sociology and women’s studies at the University of Connecticut, has been interested in feminism since she read Millett’s Sexual Politics as an undergraduate. Her Ph.D. dissertation (Harvard, 1976) was on working-class women’s responses to feminism. Her research since then has concentrated on the micropolitics of gender (the division of labor, power, satisfaction, and perceived equity in the household), public opinion on women’s issues (attitudes toward a woman for president, race differences in abortion attitudes, and gender beliefs of Cuban immigrant women), and comparative feminism. Her studies of the women’s movement include intensive research on the development of feminism in West Germany, including the difficulties it has faced as the country has recently expanded to encompass the former German Democratic Republic. She is the coeditor, with Patricia Yancey Martin, of an overview of American feminist organizations (Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, 1994) and with Beth Hess of a handbook of feminist social science research (Analyzing Gender, 1987). She is currently beginning work on a collaborative project on abortion discourse in the mass media in the United States and Germany. Professor Ferree is past chair of both the Section on Sex and Gender and the Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements of the American Sociological Association.
