DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Area(s) of Interest

Comparative Historical Sociology; Global and Transnational Sociology; Inequality/Stratification; Political Sociology; Race, Gender, and Class; Sex and Gender; Social Policy; Theory

Relevant Links

CHSS: Comparative and Historical Social Science

Gender and Sexuality Studies Program

Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy RC19

Social Science History Association

Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society

Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies

Biography

Ann Shola Orloff is Professor of Sociology and Political Science and Board of Lady Managers of the Colombian Exposition Chair at Northwestern University; earlier in her career, she was Professor of Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison and visiting professor at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and an A.B. from Harvard University. Orloff’s research and publications focus on gendered social policies, states and feminist politics in the rich capitalist democracies; social and feminist theory; and historical, comparative and global social science. Orloff is the co-editor of Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology (with Julia Adams and Elisabeth Clemens; Duke, 2005), and the co-author of States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States (with Julia O'Connor and Sheila Shaver; Cambridge, 1999). Her most recent book is Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control, co-edited with Kimberly Morgan (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She is now working on a manuscript, Farewell to Maternalism, Toward a Gender-Open Future? Transformations in Gender, Employment and Social Policies in the US and Sweden, in which she examines changes toward support for maternal employment in welfare and employment policies in the U.S. and Sweden over the last half century.

Orloff is past President of the Social Science History Association and of RC 19, the Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy of the International Sociological Association, and was a founder of Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and has held visiting positions at Sciences Po (Paris), the Institute for Future Studies (Stockholm), and the Australian National University (Canberra).

Courses Taught

SOCIOL 309/POLI SCI 390: Political Sociology Syllabus

SOCIOL 332/GNDR ST 331: Capitalism, Labor, Gender Syllabus

SOCIOL 476: The Many Hands of the State Syllabus

SOCIOL 476/GNDR ST 490/POLI SCI 490: Gender, Power, Politics Syllabus

SOCIOL 476: Settler Colonialism and Indigeneity Syllabus

Publications

Books
The Many Hands of the State: Theorizing Political Authority and Social Control, edited by Kimberly Morgan and Ann Orloff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 

Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology, edited by Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States (with Julia O'Connor and Sheila Shaver). New York, Cambridge, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 

The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Canada and the United States, 1880s-1940, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.

The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, , edited by Margaret Weir, Ann Orloff, and Theda Skocpol. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1988.

Special issues of journals edited
“Perverse Politics? Feminism, Anti-Imperialism, Multiplicity,” (with Raka Ray and Evren Savci), Political Power and Social Theory 30(2016). 

“The Power of Gender Perspectives: Feminist Influence on Policy Paradigms, Social Science and Social Politics,” edited by Ann Orloff and Bruno Palier, Social Politics 16(2009): 405-581.

“Gender, Class and Capitalism,” edited by Leslie McCall and Ann Orloff, Social Politics, 12/2(2005).

“Feminism, Comparison and Historical Social Science,” edited by Ann Orloff, Social Politics, v.5 (1998), no.1

Articles and Book Chapters
“Gender and Welfare States,” (with Marie Laperrriere) in revised second edition of Oxford Handbook. Comparative Welfare States, edited by Stephan Liebfried et al. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

"Commodification, Vulnerability, Risk: Gendered Social Policy Developments in the United States, 1980 - 2018" (by Marie Laperrriere, Ann Shola Orloff and Jane Pryma), Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy 35, issue S1: 41-58, 2019.

“The multidimensional politics of inequality: taking stock of identity politics in the U.S. Presidential election of 2016” (with Leslie McCall), British Journal of Sociology 68, issue S1: S34-56, 2017.

“Perverse Politics? Feminism, Anti-Imperialism, Multiplicity,” (with Raka Ray and Evren Savci), introduction to special issue of Political Power and Social Theory 30(2016):1-17.

“The Critics of Feminisms in Power: Rethinking Gender Equality after the Second Wave,” by Ann Orloff and Talia Shiff, Political Power and Social Theory 30(2016):109-134.

“Rethinking Power and Politics,” Social Science History 36(2012):1-21.

“The Power of Gender Perspectives: Feminist Influence on Policy Paradigms, Social Science, and Social Politics,” by Ann Shola Orloff and Bruno Palier, Social Politics 16 (2009):405-412.

“Gendering the Comparative Analysis of Welfare States: An Unfinished Agenda,” Sociological Theory 27 (2009):317-343.

“Should Feminists Aim for Gender Symmetry? Why the Dual-Earner/Dual-Carer Model May Not Be Every Feminist’s Utopia,” pp.129-160 in Institutions for Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor, edited by Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers. New York: Verso, 2009.

"Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States," American Sociological Review 58(1993):303-28

"`Why Not Equal Protection?': Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900-1911 and the United States, 1880s-1920" (by Ann Orloff and Theda Skocpol) American Sociological Review 49(1984):726-750.