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Joan C. Williams

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Joan C. Williams
Born1952 (age 72–73)
Occupation(s)Distinguished Professor, UC College of the Law, San Francisco
TitleFounding Director, Equality Action Center
Academic background
EducationBA, Yale University,
MA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
JD, Harvard University
Websitewww.equalityactioncenter.org

Joan Chalmers Williams is Distinguished Professor of Law (Emerita) at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.[1] Described as having "something approaching rock star status” in her field by The New York Times Magazine, she has published 12 books and 116 academic articles in law, sociology, psychology, and management journals.[2][3]

Education and Early Career

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Williams received a B.A. in history from Yale University, a master's degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.[4] Between college and law school she did city planning work at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.[5] She later became a law professor at University of California Law SF (2005-present).[6] Her 1989 law review article, “Deconstructing Gender,” was cited as one of the most cited law review articles ever written in 1996.[7][8] In 1998, she co-founded (with Adrienne Davis) what became the Center for WorkLife Law; she passed the baton to Liz Morris and Jessica Lee in 2024. She founded the Equality Action Center in 2024.[9][10]

Social Class Dynamics in American Politics

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Williams’ work on social class extends the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s insight that class is expressed through cultural differences between elites and non-elites.[11] For the past quarter century, Williams has documented how college-educated elites differ from middle-status (aka blue-collar) Americans. In White Working Class, she argues that the logic of blue-collar life stems from its focus on self-discipline “the kind that gets you up every day, on time, without “an attitude” to an often not-very-fulfilling job.”[12][13] Blue-collar Americans also highly value traditional institutions that aid self-discipline: the military, religion and “traditional family values.”[14][15] In contrast, the logic of elite life revolves around self-development because professional jobs require one to be “at the top of your game.” Elites also value novelty, which is a way they enact the sophistication that signals to others in the elite they are “in the know.”[16]

What results is a “class culture gap” that conservatives have sculpted into the culture wars that have forged an alliance between the working class and the Merchant Right against the Brahmin Left. Williams’ forthcoming Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back (St. Martins, May 2025) details how to destabilize this alliance, which has twice elected Donald Trump president.[17][18]

Diversity Equity and Inclusion

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Williams is well-known both in the US and abroad for her work on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Her TED talk, Why corporate diversity programs fail -- and how small tweaks can have big impact, has over 1.3 million views.[19] In 2012, she launched “bias interrupters,” a data-driven approach to interrupting bias in organizations.[20] Her team has published 37 articles in Harvard Business Review on bias interrupters and related topics.[21] Her book Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good, was called by Anne-Marie Slaughter “a deeply researched blend of evidence and practical, actionable advice.”[22][23]

Williams’ team at the Equality Action Center (EAC) has conducted 22 experiments within companies implementing bias interrupters to see if they worked.[24] One experiment equalized access to opportunities in an engineering company in a 6-month period.[24] Other experiments sharply reduced bias against women and people of color in performance evaluations, while at the same time increasing evidence-based feedback by 44-52% for all groups (including white men).[24] An experiment at a major manufacturing company sharply increased hiring of diverse candidates in a 6-month period.[24] The Equality Action Center’s (EAC) bias training reduced key forms of bias by up to 22 points.[24]

Women in the workplace

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The primary focus of Williams's work has been "gender inequality" in the workplace and the lack of women in leadership positions. She looks at how "gender roles" and expectations influence career success of both women and men. Her main arguments focus on the need (in her view) for both men and women's roles to be changed so that there will be more women in the workforce.

In Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It,[25] winner of the 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, she argues that in order for there to be equal outcome for men and women in the workplace, not only must women be "freed" from their traditionally exclusive responsibility for child-rearing, housekeeping, and other domestic duties; but that men need to be "freed" from their traditionally exclusive role as breadwinner.[26]

In her book What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know,[27] co-authored with her daughter Rachel Dempsey, she claims there are four obstacles that women face:[28]

  1. The pressure for women to constantly prove their competence at work.
  2. The need for women to find the right balance between masculinity and femininity in the workplace.
  3. The long-discussed issue of mothers balancing responsibilities at home and work.
  4. The idea that women's strategies for solving these issues vary and they often feel compelled to argue for their way and against the ways of other women.

Center for Work Life Law

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The Center for Work Life Law was founded by Williams with the goal of creating new initiatives that would help women to succeed in the workplace, which she identified as having stalled, as women's involvement in the workplace hit a plateau in the 1990s.[citation needed] The Center aims to create concrete and permanent solutions to many of the problems faced by women.

Much of the work done attempts to marry research with policy in order to change attitudes towards working women, creating new methods for women to become leaders, and also integrates and stating that gender attitudes need to change for men, as well. To date, Williams and her colleagues have succeeded in formulating new best practices, legal theories, policies, and even a framework for performance evaluations that integrates research on gender issues in the workplace.[29]

The Center for Work Life Law also has a series of initiatives and workshops aimed at providing women with skills and support in order to become leaders in their workplaces and also provides companies and organizations with information and training on how to create an environment that allows for women to advance. Additionally, their Gender Bias Learning Project works with universities to retain women in STEM programs.[30]

Selected works

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  • Williams, Joan C. (2017). White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN 978-1633693784.
  • Williams, Joan C.; Dempsey, Rachel (2014). What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know. New York, NY: NYU Press. ISBN 978-1479835454.
  • Williams, Joan C. (2010). Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674055674.
  • Williams, Joan C. (1999). Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195094640.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Joan C. Williams | University of California Law, San Francisco". Retrieved 2024-12-18.
  2. ^ "Joan C. Williams". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
  3. ^ "Family-Leave Values (Published 2007)". 2007-07-29. Archived from the original on 2024-07-08. Retrieved 2024-12-20.
  4. ^ "Joan C. Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Hastings Foundation Chair and Director of the Center for WorkLife Law - UCHastings". uchastings.edu. Archived from the original on 2015-09-10. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
  5. ^ n/a. "Joan Williams Bride of James Dempsey". The New York Times.
  6. ^ "Joan Williams, Professor of Law - UC Law SF College of the Law". UC Law San Francisco (Formerly UC Hastings). Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  7. ^ Williams, Joan (1989-01-01). "Deconstructing Gender". Michigan Law Review. 87: 797.
  8. ^ "Women We Admire this week: Hastings Law Professor Joan C. Williams". 2024-12-19. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  9. ^ "WorkLife Law". WorkLife Law. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  10. ^ "Equality Action Center - Home". Equality Action Center. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  11. ^ Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction : a social critique of the judgement of taste. Internet Archive. Cambridge, MA. : Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-21277-0.
  12. ^ White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America a book by Joan C. Williams and Liisa Ivary. 2017-06-27. ISBN 978-1-5384-7044-2.
  13. ^ TEDx Talks (2022-03-19). Are you clueless about class? | Joan C. Williams | TEDxMileHigh. Retrieved 2025-01-02 – via YouTube.
  14. ^ Williams, Joan C. (2010). Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05567-4.
  15. ^ White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America a book by Joan C. Williams and Liisa Ivary. 2017-06-27. ISBN 978-1-5384-7044-2.
  16. ^ "Outclassed". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  17. ^ "Facing Social Class | RSF". www.russellsage.org. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  18. ^ Piketty, T. (2018). "Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict". Research Papers in Economics.
  19. ^ Williams, Joan C. (2021-04-15). Why corporate diversity programs fail -- and how small tweaks can have big impact. Retrieved 2025-01-03 – via www.ted.com.
  20. ^ "Bias Interrupters". Retrieved 2025-01-03.
  21. ^ "Search Joan C. Williams". hbr.org. Retrieved 2025-01-03.
  22. ^ "Bias Interrupted Book – Bias Interrupters". Retrieved 2025-01-03.
  23. ^ "Bias Interrupted". World of Books. Retrieved 2025-01-03.
  24. ^ a b c d e "Traditional Bias Training Doesn't Work - Bias Interrupters Do". Equality Action Center. Retrieved 2025-01-03.
  25. ^ Williams, Joan C (2000). Unbending gender: why family and work conflict and what to do about it. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195147148.
  26. ^ "The Feministing Five: Joan C. Williams". feministing.com. 16 October 2010. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
  27. ^ Williams, Joan C; Dempsey, Rachel (2014). What works for women at work: four patterns working women need to know. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 9781479835454.
  28. ^ Spar, Debora L. (11 April 2014). "'What Works for Women at Work,' by Joan C. Williams and Rachel Dempsey". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
  29. ^ "About the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law". worklifelaw.org. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
  30. ^ "Women's Leadership Academy at UC Hastings – Center for Worklife Law". worklifelaw.org. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
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