Distinguished Professor Joan C. Williams is speaking at a Law Faculty Forum on Friday, October 14, 2005. Professor Williams is a prize-winning author and expert on work/family issues, is the author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (Oxford University Press, 2000), which won the 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. She has authored or co-authored four books and over fifty law review articles; her work is reprinted in casebooks on six different subjects; she has given over two hundred speeches and presentations in North and Latin America to groups as diverse as the National Employment Lawyers’ Association, the Denver Rotary Club, the American Philosophical Society, and the Modern Language Association, and has lectured at virtually every leading U.S. university. Founding Director of WorkLife Law (WLL), she is also Co-Director of the Project on Attorney Retention. She has played a leading role in documenting workplace bias against mothers. Her “Beyond the Maternal Wall: Relief for Family Caregivers Who Are Discriminated Against on the Job,” 26 Harvard Women’s Law Review 77 (2003), (co-authored with Nancy Segal), was prominently cited in Back v. Hastings on Hudson Union Free School District, 2004 U.S. App. Lexis 6684 (2d Cir. April 7, 2004). She also has played a central role in organizing social scientists to document maternal wall bias, notably in a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues (2004), which she co-edited with Monica Biernat and Faye Crosby. Her current work focuses on social psychology, and on how work/family conflict affects families across the social spectrum, with a particular focus on how caregiving issues arise in union arbitrations. For more information visit www.worklifelaw.org. and www.pardc.org.
Professor Williams teaches property as well as courses related to gender, family and employment. She has two children. Her husband is a public interest lawyer specializing in privacy and internet issues.
