Barbara Katz Rothman was born in 1948. She received her undergraduate and master's degree are from Brooklyn College and in 1979 a Ph.D in Sociology from New York University. In 1979, she became a faculty member of Baruch College and the Graduate School. In 1987, she joined other feminists of the time, including Gloria Stienem, Betty Friedan, Phyllis Chesler, Mary Daly, and Evelyn Fox Keller to write an amicius brief opposing surrogacy in the Baby M case. The brief argues that allowing women to charge a fee for bearing another couple's child would lead to their exploitation having been reduced to a commodity. The Baby M case signified an advancement in reproductive technology and was the impetus for Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchical Society, published in 1989. In the book, Katz Rothman emphasizes the social, political and technological implications of birthing and raising a child in a patriarchal society. She discusses the legal parental rights of the birth mother and child-care providers and argues for a shift in reproductive practices in order to reflect the collective experiences of women. In 1991, she was awarded the Jessie Bernard Award by the American Sociological Association for Recreating Motherhood. In 1993, she was President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which has awarded her the Lee Founders Award in 2006. In 1995, she was awarded a Fulbright Professorship to the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. In 1998, she was the President of the Sociologists for Women in Society, from which she won the Mentoring Award in 1995 and the SWS Feminist Lecturer Award in 1988. She is also the recipient of an award for “Midwifing the Movement” from the Midwives Alliance of North America in 2012. She was the President Elect of the Eastern Sociological Society for the 2016 presidential term. Katz Rothman is the recipient of the Fulbright-Saastamoinen Foundation Distinguished Chair in Health Sciences 2018-2019.
Journals and Popular Media
Barbara Katz Rothman is widely published in both popular and scholarly sources, including Social Problems, Virtual Mentor of the AMA, MIDIRS Midwifery Digest, Annual Review of Health Sciences of Australia, The Japanese Midwifery Journal, The MT. Sinai Journal of Medicine, Gender & Society, Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy, NOVA Law Review, The Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, MS., Glamour, European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, MAMM, Conscience, Midwifery Today, Legal Affairs.
