Gender, family scholar elected to sociology research group

Sociology professor Barbara Risman.

Sociology professor Barbara Risman, who studies gender, sexuality, marriage and family, was elected to the Sociological Research Association.

The group includes 400 leading sociologists in the U.S. and Canada.

She was inducted Aug. 23 at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Chicago.

She is also vice president of the 13,000-member national organization.

Risman’s research concerns the contemporary meanings of gender, sexuality, marriage and family. Her work explores topics such as gender politics in families, teen sexuality and feminist activism.

She is author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition and co-editor of Families As They Really Are, a collection of essays on how families function in everyday life.

Risman is president of the board of directors of the Council on Contemporary Families, a national organization that brings new research and clinical findings to public attention. In 2011, she received the American Sociological Association award for public understanding of sociology.

Through a fellowship at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, she will spend this academic year completing Where Will Millennials Take Us? Transforming the Gender Structure. The book is based on more than 100 life histories of contemporary young adults.