Women and Gender: Making a Difference
Jan Yoder earned her doctorate in psychology in 1979 from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her interests in women, gender, and feminism developed professionally through her observations of the first women cadets at West Point and personally through her own struggles with sexual harassment, dual-career challenges, work-family juggling, and women s universal exposure to sexism. Her job paths traveled a circuitous but enlightening route through West Point, where she stood out as one of the first two civilian women to teach there; through a small student-centered college in St. Louis, Webster University; through an exhilarating foray into the world of advertising and marketing research in Chicago at DDB Needham Worldwide; to large research-oriented universities in Milwaukee and finally Akron. The wealth of these diverse experiences comes through in this book as she blends a strong research base with her sensitivity to women s and men s everyday lives and with an engaging style that comes from teaching for over 30 years in a variety of college and university settings.  Her teaching has been recognized with the Heritage Award for Distinguished, Longstanding, and Substantial Contributions to Feminist Teaching from the Society for the Psychology of Women (SPW; APA, Division 35) in 2006, with the Teacher-Scholar Award from the University of Akron in 2008, and with both university (1994) and college (1996) distinguished teaching awards at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her involvement in research culminated in 2010 when she became Editor of Psychology of Women Quarterly, the official journal of SPW published by Sage, which put her at the cutting edge of reviewing feminist research an ideal vantage from which to write this text. Her service to SPW, spanning over two decades, was recognized in 2010 with the Sue Rosenberg Zalk Award for Distinguished Service service that includes being President of SPW in 2000-2001 as well as secretary, program chair, newsletter editor, and other assorted positions.  She continues to live in Akron, Ohio with her soul-mate, sociologist John Zipp, and is deeply proud of her children as they work toward finishing graduate school (Kate) and college (Dan). With an increasingly empty nest, she is re-discovering hobbies of gardening , reading, and hiking and appreciates the unfailing companionship of her stay-at-home cat (Emma) and dog (Meg).