RUTH SEIDEL

Ruth Sidel is professor of Sociology at Hunter College of the City University of New York. A graduate of Wellesley College and the Boston University School of Social Work, she has worked in the care of emotionally disturbed children in Boston and as director of social work in a community health center in the Bronx. After the granting of her PhD in 1978, she was appointed to the faculty of Hunter College. In 1988-89 she was co-founder and initial co-director of the Center for the Study of Family Policy at Hunter.

Professor Sidel has studied the role of women, the care of preschool children and the provision of human services in urban areas in the United States and in several other countries. She has made several study visits to the People’s Republic of China, the first in 1971 and the most recent in 1996. In addition, she has made repeated visits to Great Britain and Sweden to study health and human services. She has lectured widely in the United States and abroad on the impact of poverty on women and children, on the problems of combining work and family, and on the need for a comprehensive, humane U.S. family policy.

Professor Sidel’s books include Women and Child Care in China (first published in 1973, revised edition, Penguin, 1982); Women and Children Last: The Plight of Poor Women in Affluent America (Viking/Penguin, 1986); On Her Own: Growing Up in the Shadow of the American Dream (Viking/Penguin, 1990). Her most recent book, Keeping Women and Children Last: America’s War on the Poor, was published by Penguin Books in May, 1996 (revised edition, 1998).

Department of Sociology
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
Tel.: 212.772.5648
212.517.3014
Fax: 212.772.5645
rsidel@hejira.hunter.cuny.edu