Barbara Bergmann (written by Sarah F. Small)

Many economists may know of her famous occupational crowding hypothesis, or her outspoken opposition to the Nobel Prize for economics. Others may know of her as a founding member of the International Association for Feminist Economics, or as the first president of the Eastern Economics Association. Some in more popular contexts might know of Bergmann from her appearance on television talk shows in defense of affirmative action, or from her cartoon book on social security. Barbara Bergmann was influential (and often controversial) in nearly every capacity in which she worked.

Born in the Bronx in 1927, Bergmann was a feminist from an early age: ever since she perceived that “a woman had to have her own money” at the age of six. Though neither of her parents had graduated high school, and though she did not receive much guidance from her high school, Bergmann applied to Cornell University and MIT. The admissions committee at MIT “thought she was crazy” for expressing interest as a civil engineer: she was rejected from MIT and accepted at Cornell. She studied mathematics for her undergraduate degree, but her interests in discrimination began during this time in her life. At Cornell, she was a member of the NAACP and was heavily influenced by Gunner Myrdal’s An American Dilemma, which was an account of racism and discrimination in the southern United States. After college, she experienced discrimination of her own: graduating in 1948, the recession, discrimination against Jewish workers, and occupational gender segregation made it difficult for her to find a job that was interesting. She moved back in with her mother (who was angry Bergmann had not ‘caught a husband’ while in college) and looked for a job in the “male categories” for months. She eventually settled, took a job as a typist, “in the female category,” but “couldn’t endure the boredom” and quit after two days.

Bergmann eventually found a low-ranking job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) office in New York City, and it was there that she realized the racism she read about in Myrdal’s book was not just confined to the South. While working at the BLS in 1950, Bergmann was frustrated with the way in which the office’s sole Black employee was not permitted to advance in his career. Bergmann was deeply impacted by this experience, and even returned to a BLS office more than a decade later to see if similar types of discrimination were still in practice. She was disappointed to find that they were.

Interactions with economists at the BLS is what inspired her to pursue a doctorate in economics. Upon completing her doctoral degree in economics at Harvard (at the time, Radcliffe for women) she again faced discrimination: “I was second in my class at Harvard in 1959, but couldn’t get an academic job… and I attribute it to sex discrimination.” Her first job after her time at Harvard was as a staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisors under President Kennedy in 1961 and 1962. This is the beginning of her long career in Washington D.C. After working as an economist for the Brookings Institution and the US Department of State, Bergmann eventually held positions as professor at the University of Maryland and then at American University for most of her life.

In her early career, Bergmann published her groundbreaking occupational crowding hypothesis. In contradiction to the prevailing (largely Beckarian) theories on the economics of discrimination at the time, Bergmann explained how discrimination is both rational and profitable from the perspective of White workers. Her 1971 occupational crowding hypothesis showed that when Black men are discriminated against and excluded from occupations dominated by White men, this decreases the available labor supply in these occupations and thus raises the wages of White men. At the same time, crowding Black men into comparatively small number of occupations increases the competition and labor supply in those occupations, thus systematically suppressing the wages of Black men. Bergmann then explained how a lessening of the crowding effect would lead to a slight decrease of White wages, but would increase both the national output and wages for Black workers.

Bergmann’s life’s work was primarily dedicated to labor market discrimination. After her seminal 1971 publication, Bergmann went on to publish several articles and books on race- and gender-based discrimination, including her books The Economic Emergence of Women (1986) and In Defense of Affirmative Action (1996). She also contributed regularly to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Throughout her academic career, Bergmann always kept one foot in policy. She often testified as an expert witness in cases on gender- and race-based labor market discrimination, and she took pride in her work being largely applicable to policy. In fact, she expressed her disappointment with members of the International Association of Feminist Economists (IAFFE) for their lack of attention to policy issues in a 1998 interview, just before she became president of the organization. A common theme: Bergmann was endlessly outspoken in her convictions. For example, she argued that Becker’s New Family Economics brought “preposterous conclusions,” and specifically chastised his assertions about patriarchal altruism within the family and his suggestion that women do better under polygamy than monogamy. Bergmann also published pieces in opposition to the Nobel prize in economics and often critiqued the majority of economists for spending too much time theorizing in their ivory tower and not enough time researching real-world phenomena.
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Bergmann was deeply influential within the field of economics and was always working against the grain to improve the status of women and of feminist research in the field. Bergmann was a founding member and president of IAFFE, as well as associate editor of their journal Feminist Economics. She served on the American Economic Association Advisory Committee to the Census Bureau from 1977 to 1982 and persuaded the committee to collect data on child support and to stop designating the husband as the "Head of Household." She also served a term as chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP).


Ultimately, Barbara Bergmann paved the way both for feminist economics and for women in the economics discipline. From fighting discrimination “every step of the way” in her career, to her foundational work in feminist economics, Bergmann’s mark is unmistakable. Her influence is perhaps best summed up by a statement made by Susan Himmelweit in IAFFE’s commemoration of Bergmann upon her death in 2005: “She was straightforward, fearless, and ruthlessly honest—just what feminist economics needed to get started.”
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This biography was written by Sarah F. Small. Sarah is a PhD candidate in economics at Colorado State University. She also works for the journal Feminist Economics as a graduate fellow and is a visiting researcher at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy. She tweets at @sarahfsmall and can be contacted via email at sarah.small@colostate.edu.