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Joan
Williams

Distinguished Professor of Law and UC Hastings Foundation Chair and Director of the Center for WorkLife Law

  • Office 636-200
  • Email Address williams@uchastings.edu
  • Telephone (415) 565-4706
  • Follow Me on Twitter

Biography

Described as having “something approaching rock star status” in her field by The New York Times Magazine, Joan C. Williams has played a central role in reshaping the conversation about work, gender, and class over the past quarter century. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law, Hastings Foundation Chair, and Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Williams’ path-breaking work helped create the field of work-family studies and modern workplace flexibility policies.

Williams’ 2014 book What Works for Women at Work (co-written with daughter Rachel Dempsey) was praised by The New York Times Book Review: “Deftly combining sociological research with a more casual narrative style, What Works for Women at Work offers unabashedly straightforward advice in a how-to primer for ambitious women.” Following its success, Sheryl Sandberg and LeanIn.org asked Joan to create short videos sharing the strategies discussed in the book. The videos have been downloaded over 975,000 times and are featured by Virgin Airlines as in-flight entertainment, seen literally around the world. Most recently, Williams co-authored a workbook companion to What Works for Women at Work, available now from NYU Press.

Williams founded Gender Bias Bingo, a web-based project aimed at providing information and tools on gender bias to professors. Williams has explored the parallels and differences between gender and racial bias in two reports. The first, “Double Jeopardy? Gender Bias Against Women in Science” has been shared over 40,000 times in the media, and the second, “Climate Control? Gender and Racial Bias in Engineering” was co-authored by the Society for Women Engineers and surveyed over 3,000 engineers.

Williams is one of the 10 most cited scholars in her field. She has authored 11 books, over 90 academic articles, and her work has been covered in publications from Oprah Magazine to The Atlantic. Her awards include the Families and Work Institute’s Work Life Legacy Award (2014), the American Bar Foundation’s Outstanding Scholar Award (2012), and the ABA’s Margaret Brent Women Award for Lawyers of Achievement (2006). In 2008, she gave the Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard. Her Harvard Business Review article, “What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class” has been read over 3.7 million times and is now the most read article in HBR’s 90-plus year history.

Expertise

  • Employment and Labor Law
  • Feminist Legal Theory
  • Gender and Sexuality

Education

  1. Harvard Law School

    J.D., Law

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    M.A., City Planning

  3. Yale University

    B.A., History

Accomplishments

  1. Work Life Legacy Award 2014

    Awarded by the Families and Work Institute.

  2. Hastings Visionary Award 2013

    Awarded by The University of California at Hastings.

  3. Outstanding Scholar Award 2012

    Awarded by the American Bar Foundation.

Selected Scholarship

  1. Work as a Masculinity Contest 2018

    Journal of Social Issues

  2. Beyond Work-Life “Integration” 2016

    Annual Review of Psychology

  3. Tools for Change: Boosting the Retention of Women in the Stem Pipeline 2016

    Journal of Research in Gender Studies

  4. Double Jeopardy? An Empirical Study with Implications for the Debates over Implicit Bias and Intersectionality 2014

    Harvard Journal of Law & Gender

  5. Cultural Schemas, Social Class, and the Flexibility Stigma 2013

    Journal of Social Issues

  6. Beyond the Maternal Wall: Relief for Family Caregivers Who Are Discriminated Against on the Job 2003

    Harvard Women's Law Journal

  7. Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do about It 2000

    Oxford University Press

  8. Dissolving the Sameness/Difference Debate: A Post-Modern Path Beyond Essentialism in Feminist and Critical Race Theory 1991

    Duke Law Journal

  9. Deconstructing Gender 1989

    Michigan Law Review (reprinted in Feminist Jurisprudence (Oxford Univ. Press, 1993))

Courses

  1. Gender and the Law
  2. Leadership Skills for Lawyers
  3. Advanced Employment Law

Links

  1. Publications
  2. Blog
  3. Center for WorkLife Law
  4. Project for Attorney Retention
  5. Huffington Post Blog

Related News

Untitled (740 x 555 px) (1)

Joan Williams Publishes Data-Based Workplace DEI Guide

12/13/21

Faculty Achievements: Fall 2021

11/28/21
portrait of Chancellor and Dean David Faigman, #1 cited evidence scholar

UC Hastings Boasts Top-Cited Scholars in Evidence, Civil Procedure

10/15/21

Faculty Achievements: Summer 2021

10/09/21
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