Mirra Komarovsky Papers

Mirra Komarovsky was born in 1906, in Baku, a city located on the Caspian Sea, in what was then Russia. In 1920, she immigrated to the United States, and completed high school in Wichita, Kansas. She moved to New York City and began her education at Barnard College. She obtained a degree in Sociology from Barnard, and went on to receive an MA at Columbia University, also in Sociology. She taught at Skidmore College for two years before returning to Columbia University to complete a PhD in Sociology, and joined Barnard College as an instructor in 1938. She continued to teach at Barnard for thirty-two years, retiring in 1970. However, she returned to the college in 1978 to serve as chairwoman of the Women’s Studies department.

Mirra Komarovsky was an influential figure in the field of Sociology, focusing her work on studies about family, gender relations, and women’s education. She was the author of numerous books and articles, including Women in College: Shaping New Feminine Identities, a study on the women's movement and education, in which she analyzed survey responses from over 200 students of the Barnard class of 1983. She found that while attitudes about women’s place within the world may be changing, institutions have not adapted to these changes. Mirra Komarovsky also served as the second female president of the American Sociological Association in 1973 and 1974, and was presented with the Distinguished Career Award from the Association in 1991. Mirra Komarovsky passed away at the age of 93, in 1999.