Cynthia Fuchs Epstein is an Americansociologist and Distinguished ProfessorEmerita at theCUNY Graduate Center.^[2] Fuchs Epstein served as president of theAmerican Sociological Association in 2006.^[3]

AtColumbia University, Fuchs Epstein received a grant of $1,000 from the Institute of Life Insurance to study the American family.^[3] Her study showed that women were beginning to enter the workforce at higher rates than they previously had, but there still weren't many jobs considered appropriate for women, which locked women out of prestigious professions and prevented upward mobility.^[3]

For herdissertation, Fuchs Epstein analyzed the factors that affected women's exclusion and inclusion in the professional realm, focusing onfemale lawyers.^[3] She studied a sample of women lawyers who found ways around the prevalent gender discrimination.^[3]

In 1966, she joined a number of other women who were academics or in other professional positions to form theNational Organization for Women inNew York City.^[3] She also actively participated in professional women's groups such asSociologists for Women in Society and the Professional Women's Caucus.^[3][4]

For her first study after completing her graduate education, she studied Black female professionals whom she interviewed about the various factors that made it possible for them to achieve their positions despite the discrimination they faced for their gender and skin color.^[3] Out of this study came an article titled "Positive Effects of the Multiple Negative: Explaining the Success of Black Professional Women", which theAmerican Journal of Sociology published in 1973, explaining that employers were willing to hire African-American women because they could look good for hiring them but not have to hire both a woman and an African-American person.^[5][3]

Fuchs Epstein participated in various hearings onsexism as a scholar and activist, testifying at theEqual Employment Opportunity Commission where she spoke aboutTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act and the barriers women faced in the professional world at the time.^[3] Fuchs Epstein was a consultant to theWhite House under two administrations as well as to theAT&T Corporation andGeneral Motors.^[3] She also served at theNational Academy of Sciences on the Committee of Women's Employment.^[6] She conducted research that focused on gender- and race-based segregation atAT&T.^[2] She served as anexpert witness on theCitadel military school case where she argued women should be included in the school.^[3][7]

Fuchs Epstein's first book was published in 1971 and was titledWomen's Place: Option and Limits on Professional Careers.^[3] In it, she focused on women's professional advancement as framed by the “opportunities offered them, the organizational limits placed on their ambitions, and the recognition and reward of their accomplishments.”^[3] Her work "made a crucial connection between traditionalsociology and the emerging field ofwomen's studies."^[3]

Her second book was published in 1981 and was titledWomen in Law, focusing on the careers of female lawyers. Her bookDeceptive Distinctions was published in 1988, focusing stereotypes and on how boundaries are socially constructed.^[3]

In the 1990s, theAssociation of the Bar of the City of New York's Committee on the Status of Women invited Fuchs Epstein to research why women's professional careers often ended mid-stream. She conducted a study on the professional mobility of women in several corporatelaw firms.^[3] From this research emerged a focus on the concept of theglass ceiling, and in 1993,Women in Law was reissued with a new section discussing the glass ceiling effect in the legal profession.^[3][8]

Fuchs Epstein was invited to meet with Hirsh Cohen, vice-president of theAlfred Sloan Foundation, in 1994. She conducted research that discovered that less than three percent of lawyers chose to work part-time, because this caused others to perceive them as less committed to their professional life and resulted in them not being given meaningful work. This research informed her next book, titledThe Part-time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life, Family and Gender, published in 1999.^[3][9]

She published a paper in 2004 titled "Border Crossings: The Constraints of Time Norms in Transgressions of Gender and Professional Roles". It looks at the ways in which ideologies of time and gender restrict social change.^[3][10]

Fuchs Epstein has been Distinguished Professor Emerita of sociology at theCity University of New York Graduate Center since 1990. She is a past president of theAmerican Sociological Association (ASA).^[2] She has been a visiting scholar at theRussel Sage Foundation andColumbia Law School,^[11] visiting professor at theStanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,^[12] and visiting fellow at theStanford Law School.^[13] She was chair of the ASA Occupations and Organizations, Culture, and Sex and Gender Sections and 1984 president of theEastern Sociological Society.^[3][6] She was also a 1976Guggenheim Fellow.^[3][14]

In 1982, Fuchs Epstein received the Merit Award from theAmerican Bar Association and theScribes Book Award forWomen in Law.^[15][16] Fuchs Epstein has received are the 2004 Eastern Sociological Society Merit Award,^[17] the 2003 ASAJessie Bernard Award,^[18] and the 1994 ASA Section on the Sociology of Sex and Gender's Distinguished Article Award.^[19]

• The Part-time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life, Family and Gender. New York:Routledge, 1999.ISBN 978-0-415-92124-4
• Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1990.ISBN 978-0-300-04694-6
• Women in Law. New York:Basic Books, 1980.ISBN 978-0-465-09205-5
• Women's Place: Options and Limits in Professional Careers. Berkeley:University of California Press, 1970.ISBN 978-0-520-01581-4

• Living people
• Presidents of the American Sociological Association
• CUNY Graduate Center faculty
• Columbia University alumni
• 20th-century American sociologists
• 20th-century American women sociologists
• 21st-century American sociologists
• 21st-century American women sociologists

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• Year of birth missing (living people)