Lise Vogel

After the publication of Marxism and the Oppression of Women, she kept working on the development of Marxist-feminist theory, focusing on family, maternity, workplace and gender policies among other topics. She studied the current state of feminism, analyzing the debates between the equality and difference perspectives in relation to maternity leave and other public policies. Such research is mostly developed in her book Mothers on the Job: Maternity Policy in the U.S. Workplace (1993) as well as in numerous articles, some of them included in Woman Questions: Essays for a Materialist Feminism (1995).

As she moved into the field of sociology, she studied the Marxist tradition in relation to the woman question, analyzing the most relevant texts as well as the evolution of the Marxist movement's positions on the woman question and identifying two contradictory legacies that had coexisted since the beginning of Marxism. In addition, she participated in crucial debates within socialist feminism, such as the domestic labor debate and the issue of how to articulate Marxism and feminism. Both the research on the woman question traditions in Marxism and the analyses of socialist feminist work are discussed in the book Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, first published in 1983.

While the first edition of Marxism and the Oppression of Women, in 1983, made almost no impact, after thirty years, the second edition of the book (2013) had a very different reception. Since the publication of the second edition five years ago, Lise Vogel has been invited to give talks all over the world, the book has had many reviews, it had already been published in Turkish and Chinese but the second edition was also translated to German and Turkish and new translations are underway. According to Ferguson and McNally, if Vogel's work didn't initially get the attention it deserved is because it "appeared at a moment of acute disarray for the socialist-feminist movement […] [with] neoliberalism in the political sphere and postmodern theory in the intellectual realm". In contrast, new anti-capitalist movements are emerging today and the interest on marxist theory is growing again at the moment. That is the reason why Marxism and the Oppression of Women has made an impact only after so many years.

In 1976, she started another doctorate at Brandeis University in Sociology, finishing in 1981, two years before publishing her most influential work: Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. She taught sociology at Rider University until her retirement in 2003.

She finished her Ph.D. in Art History in 1968 and soon started to teach at Brown University. In her initial career as an art historian, she published The Column of Antoninus Pius as well as some of the first articles on feminist art history and women's history. She also taught courses on these topics, which was an innovation.

She received her A.B. degree from Radcliffe College in 1960 and then became a doctoral student in Art History at Harvard University. During her time in graduate school, she became involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements and she worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi between 1964 and 1965. In the late 60's, she participated in the emerging women's liberation movement, taking the side of its socialist feminist wing, and joined the organization Bread & Roses in Boston.

Lise Vogel was born in New York City. Her father, Sidney Vogel, was a distinguished American doctor who volunteered during the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Spanish Republic between 1937 and 1939. Being raised in the United States in a left-wing family during the Cold War, she learned from a very young age to think critically and question the way society works.