Sandra Lipsitz Bem (1944-2014)

This article memorializes Sandra Lipsitz Bem (1944-2014). Bem was a feminism psychologist whose incisive writing and research transformed the psychology of gender and contributed significantly to our understanding of sex-typing, psychological androgyny, gender schema theory, and sexual inequality. Bem and her husband, Daryl Bem, were active in the feminist community in Pittsburgh, and worked with the National Organization for Women to challenge gender-segregated job advertisements in a lawsuit against the Pittsburgh Press in 1969. The Bems co-wrote an influential article, "Case Study of a Nonconscious Ideology: Training the Woman to Know Her Place" (1970) using the word "sexism" when it was not widely known. She created the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) and conducted research showing that conventional gender typing was not necessarily correlated with psychological adjustment. Her publications won her enduring recognition and awards, including the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution (1976), Distinguished Publication Awards from the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP; 1977, 1994), the Young Scholar Award from the American Association of University Women (1980), and, posthumously, the Distinguished Career Award (AWP, 2014).