Barbara Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander in the United States in 1941. In 1963 she听graduated听from Reed College, where she majored in physics. She received a PhD in cell biology from Rockefeller University in 1968.
Ehrenreich worked first as an analyst with the Bureau of the Budget in New York City and with the Health Policy Advisory Center, and later as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Between 1979 and 1981, she served as an adjunct associate professor at New York University and as a visiting professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia and at Sangamon State University. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America.
Ehrenreich later worked as an activist, mostly in health-related research and advocacy, and as a freelance writer for various magazines and newspapers. She is also the author of over 18 books, including Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, The Hearts of Men and the bestsellers Smile or Die and Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America.
She delivered the Beatty Lecture on December 7, 1993, titled 鈥淐an Feminism Change the World?鈥�
Image: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
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