Who We Are
E.J. GRAFF
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As Senior Researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, E.J. Graff is heading the Gender and Justice Project, where she is investigating and exposing some of the serious inequities, injustices, and human rights issues that confront many women. Since 2001, she has been a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center. As an author and journalist, E.J. Graff has written widely about issues of marriage and family, women’s lives, and the lives of lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgendered people. Her widely praised work is often cited in legal journals, reprinted for use in academic courses and textbooks, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.
In addition to having written two books, E.J. Graff is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributor to TPMCafe.com. Her work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times Magazine, The
- Fellowships and research awards
- Books
- Investigative highlights
- Public speaking
- Other affiliations
- Articles by E.J. Graff
Fellowships and research awards
E.J. Graff’s research and analysis have been furthered by prestigious fellowships and research awards. During the 2000-2001 academic year, she was a Liberal Arts Fellow in Law and Journalism at
Books
Getting Even: revealed that the wage gap is due to sex discrimination, exposed endemic management indifference to women's equality, and showed social science advances in understanding bias
Most recently, E.J. Graff collaborated on former Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy’s book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Make As Much As Men--And What To Do So We Will, published by Simon & Schuster/Touchstone in October 2005. The book exposed the fact that the gender wage gap has remained steady for more than a decade, and that much of the gap is due to illegal discrimination. The book exposed the inherent limitations of demographic data used by economists and researchers to discern causes of the wage gap. And it brought together in one place--for the first time--a list of sex discrimination settlements and jury awards, revealing the extent of the sex discrimination in the U.S. workplace and how that can be attributed to endemic management indifference.
Getting Even launched Dr. Murphy’s campaign to close the wage gap within ten years, under the auspices of her new organization, the WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project. In response to the book's revelations, YWCAs and other organizations around the country are hosting “WAGE clubs,” in which women study the book, research their own and other women’s wages, and take action on their jobs and in their communities. Getting Even was called “a compelling and convincing read” that is supported by “copious statistics” and “the testimonies of scores of women who have felt the sting of sex discrimination,” as Cecil Johnson wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune. The book has been praised in print in such publications as the Washington Post and Boston Globe, as well as on the web and on local and national media outlets (public and commercial, AM and FM, cable and network) coast to coast, and has stayed on bestseller lists for weeks at a time.
In helping to research Getting Even, Ms. Graff showed the limits and scope of equal employment opportunity and sexual harassment case law, and revealed recent advances in the social science of bias. She contributed as Dr. Murphy and the WAGE Project built a database of sex discrimination lawsuits, now public and searchable. In follow-up articles, cultural commentary, and radio appearances, Ms. Graff is persistently bringing to the nation’s attention such problems as sexual harassment, involuntary “mommy tracking,” and the high cost of the wage gap.
What Is Marriage For? brought a reasoned, historical perspective to debates over same-sex marriage
E.J. Graff’s first book What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, examined 2,500 years of a central pillar of social life, and asked why, for the first time in history, our society is considering opening the institution to same-sex couples. In writing What Is Marriage For?, Graff researched the history of marriage and the family, and discovered that dramatic shifts have taken place in marriage policy, customs, theology, and law over the millennia. Her book made vividly clear that, contrary to the claim that marriage has been one monolithic entity for 6,000 years, marriage is constantly shifting to suit each era and economy, each culture and class. The book serves as a historical primer relevant to a wide range of contemporary marriage and family debates: about love, sex, and money; mothers, fathers, and others; living together versus taking vows; pre-nups and divorce decrees; first vows and last rites; and much more.
Published five years before the
Reviews, commentary, excerpts, and interviews with the author appeared in major publications nationwide, such as The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and in several social issues anthologies. The Chicago Tribune called it "an enlightening romp through the history of marriage in western Europe and the U.S.," while Kirkus Reviews called it “a well-organized work of thoughtful popular history that displays considerable wit and verve, and that is in equal measure instructive and entertaining.”
Investigative highlights
Revealed secret investigation into sexual harassment in the Marines
After Ms. Graff wrote about the cover-up of sexual harassment at the U.S. Air Force Academy in The American Prospect’s May 2003 issue, female investigators contacted her to leak documents about their investigation into similar behavior in the U.S. Marines, and into the undermining of DACOWITS, the agency launched by President Eisenhower to protect the interests of women in the military. She investigated and wrote about the documents in the July 2003 Prospect, explaining that they revealed a climate of fear and intimidation, with little recourse for female Marines who were being sexually harassed.
Reporting and analysis on injustices toward lesbians and gay men
E.J. Graff was the first to write in the New York Times Magazine’s late “Hers” column about lesbian issues, and has been a pioneer in writing for mainstream publications about injustices facing lesbians and gay men. Her investigative articles have included in-depth reporting on bio-mothers who try to manipulate existing laws to deny custody and visitation to their children’s other mothers – even after the co-mother’s adoption is final, and even though the co-mother has been an integral part of the child’s birth and family life. She covered the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court oral arguments, after having reported extensively on the unjust ways in which American sodomy laws have been used. For instance, in a variety of cases, men and women who acknowledge that they are lesbian or gay were denied employment or child custody on the grounds that they were admitted felons—i.e., that they violated state sodomy laws.
Ms. Graff was the first national reporter to write about the bifurcated tax filing status facing
Looking beyond XX and XY
In a series of articles that appeared in four different publications, Ms. Graff researched, reported on, and analyzed the creation and rise of a new social identity, called “transgender.” Outlining this new movement’s history and legal and moral claims, she reported on such cases as a teenage girl incarcerated for three years in a mental hospital (where she was twice raped) because she refused to wear a dress; a man fired from his truckdriving job when his employer learned that, off the job, he sometimes wore feminine clothes; and cross-dressers wounded in car accidents or beatings who were laughed at and left to die when paramedics discover their “real” sex. Funded with a research award from The Nation Institute Investigative Fund, Ms. Graff’s reporting into current research on how nature, nurture, and culture intersect to create a variety of gender identities has frequently been reprinted and anthologized.
Public Speaking
Ms. Graff is regularly interviewed on radio and television, and is often invited as a public speaker on such issues as the dearth of women’s bylines in the mainstream media, gender and social justice, the history of marriage, international laws about same-sex partnership recognition, and whether same-sex couples belong within today’s philosophy of marriage.
Ms. Graff has spoken at conferences, law seminars, government presentations, churches, synagogues, and colleges, including the Nieman Fellows Colloquium, the Cambridge Forum, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Unitarian Universalist Association’s annual convention, the International Lesbian and Gay Officials annual conference, Stanford University, University of California at Davis, Lewis & Clark College, Reed College, University of Southern California, Regis College, Quinnipiac Law School, UMass/Boston, UMass/Amherst, New England School of Law, George Mason University, Ohio University, MIT, the Radcliffe Institute, and The New School.
Ms. Graff has been interviewed or has offered commentary on such programs as New England Cable TV’s Nightly News, WBGH’s Greater Boston, BBC’s The World, MTV’s documentary series, PBS’s In the Life, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, on
Recent Public Appearances by E.J. Graff
"Sexual Harassment: Twenty Years After Meritor v. Vinson." E.J. Graff moderated this New School panel, which she organized, made up of a "dream team" of experts on how sexual harassment law affects women's jobs and women's lives. Check under "special events" for the archived webcast.
Other Affiliations
WAM! (Women, Action, & Media)
E.J. Graff is a cofounder of and senior advisor to the WAM! (Women, Action, & Media) conference held annually in
E.J. Graff is a member of JAWS (Journalism & Women Symposium) and Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. Born in Brooklyn and raised in the Midwest, she is a summa cum laude graduate of the
Recent Articles by E.J. Graff
"A Practical Present for Mom," The Boston Globe, May 13, 2007.
"The Mommy War Machine," Washington Post Outlook, April 29, 2007.
"The Opt-Out Myth," Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2007.
"Striking back," The Boston Globe, September 3, 2006.
"Till hardships do all of us part," The Boston Globe, July 25, 2006.
"Fighting for Fair Treatment," The American Prospect Online, April 27, 2006.
"The Skinny Pink Paycheck Syndrome," E.J. Graff and Evelyn Murphy, Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2006
“Too Pretty a Picture,”
“The Line on Sex,”
“The Wage Gap: Why Women Are Still Paid Less Than Men,”
“The Working Mommy Trap,” TomPaine.com, October 5, 2005
Review: Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich,
“Marrying Outside the Box,” The New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2005
“A Few Good Men?” The American Prospect, May 2003
“Bring Me Women,” The American Prospect, July 2003