VOGEL, Lise

PERSONAL: Female. Education: Radcliffe College, B.A., Ph.D. (art history); Brandeis University, Ph.D. (sociology).

ADDRESSES: Office—Rider University, 2083 Lawrence Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Brown University, Providence, RI, assistant professor of art history, c. 1960s; Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ, instructor.

WRITINGS:

The Column of Antonius Pius, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1973.

Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1983.

Mothers on the Job: Maternity Policy in the U.S. Workplace, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1993.

Woman Questions: Essays for a Materialist Feminism, Routledge & Kegan Paul (New York, NY), 1995.

Author of numerous articles on women and work, feminist theory, and social policy.

SIDELIGHTS: Lise Vogel, the daughter of well-educated parents of German-Jewish descent, grew up in New York City during the 1950s. With her mother belonging to the Communist Party while living in the United States, Vogel lived with "feelings of contradiction, marginality, and dread," she recalled in the introduction to Women Questions: Essays for a Materialist Feminism.

Vogel, while earning a doctorate in art history at Radcliffe College, was active in the civil rights movement and protested against the Vietnam War; she was twice jailed. These activities influenced her career significantly. She published Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, inspired by her interest in the women's liberation movement. After teaching at Brown University, she earned a second doctorate. At Rider University, she taught courses in family, feminist social theory, and social deviance.

Vogel also published several studies on women's issues: Mothers on the Job: Maternity Policy in the U.S. Workplace and Woman Questions: Essays for a Materialist Feminism. In the former, Vogel presents the concepts of equality and difference that contributed to maternity policy during the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, focusing on relevant court cases. Due to the work's "dry, legalistic style" and lack of social history to provide background, a Publishers Weekly reviewer said it was better suited for specialists. Nation's Eileen Boris wrote that Vogel's discussion is "generally well balanced," yet she does not seriously question the "unequal results that have come from some equal-rights measures, particularly in family law." Still, Boris praised the work.

Woman Questions contains previously published essays about socialist feminism. Vogel addresses the role of socialist feminism in the modern women's movement. Mary Margaret Fonow, in a joint review in Gender and Society of Woman Questions and Zillah Eisenstein's Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the Twenty-first Century, deemed both books significant because "both writers have the intellectual honesty and courage to take on important challenges to feminist theory and practice in a transnational global economy." Vogel stresses that gender, class, and race interrelate for women. "These books help feminist scholars and activists to understand the complexities and seriousness of the task at hand," Fonow wrote.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

World of Sociology, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Capital and Class, fall, 1996, Filio Diamanti, review of Women Questions: Essays for a Material Feminism, pp. 145-146.

Choice, September, 1993, S. K. Gallagher, review of Mothers on the Job: Maternity Policy in the U.S. Workplace, p. 228.

Contemporary Sociology, September, 1995, Linda M. Blum, review of Mothers on the Job, pp. 615-616.

Gender and Society, February, 1996, Roberta Spalter-Roth, review of Mothers on the Job, pp. 100-102; June, 1997, Mary Margaret Fonow, review of Women Questions, pp. 373-376.

Nation, October 18, 1993, Eileen Boris, review of Mothers on the Job, pp. 433-437.

Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1993, review of Mothers on the Job, p. 51.

Science and Society, winter, 1995, Sally J. Kenney, review of Mothers on the Job, pp. 570-572.

Signs, winter, 1988, Mary Margaret Fonow, review of Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, pp. 347-351.

Women and Politics, September, 1997, Lynn Chapman, review of Mothers on the Job, pp. 99-104.

Women's Review of Books, October, 1993, Peggy Kahn, review of Mothers on the Job, pp. 25-27.*