In Memoriam: Pauline Bernice Lackow Bart, 1930-2021

Pauline Bart, a leading feminist scholar who taught sociology and women’s studies classes at the University of Chicago and served on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, died on October 8 at a hospice care facility in Raleigh North Carolina. She was 91 years old.

A native of Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Bart held a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D., all in sociology and all from the University of California, Los Angeles. She joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1970 and taught there until 1992. She later lectured at the University of California, Los Angles, before retiring from teaching in 1995. Her papers are archived at Duke University Archives.

Her 1973 study “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Orifice,” which was published in the American Journal of Sociology, examined sexism in widely published textbooks on gynecology. Another study that went against the conventional wisdom of the time, found that women who tried to fight off men who sexually attacked them were more likely to survive the attack than women who did not fight back.

Dr. Bart was the co-author or coeditor The Student Sociologist’s Handbook (Simon & Schuster1971) Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies (Pergamon Press, 1985), and Violence Against Women: The Bloody Footprints (SAGE, Publications, 1993).