Cynthia Fuchs Epstein

Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at The Graduate Center of the City was honored in 2004 with the ASA Jessie Bernard award for her pioneering work exploring women’s exclusion from the professions. She was President of the American Sociological Association for the year 2005 to 2006. Among her books are Woman’s Place (1970), Women in Law (1981), and her landmark theoretical work Deceptive Distinctions (1988). Perhaps her most central insight is that since women and men are far more similar than they are different-in terms of both abilities and aspirations-the exclusion of women from equal status in the workplace is without foundation and can only be attributed to inaccurate stereotypic notions of women’s lives, hopes, and abilities.

Appointed Distinguished Professor at The Graduate Center in 1990, Professor Epstein first joined the faculty of Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in Sociology in 1975, at which time she was also on the faculty of CUNY’s Queens College. Among other academic experience, she has been a visiting professor at both the Columbia and Stanford schools of law. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and has served on several major U.S. government/presidential commissions. She received her B.A. from Antioch College, attended the University of Chicago Law School, has an M.A from the New School for Social Research (now New School University), and received her Ph.D. from Columbia.