Klein, Ethel 1952-

views updated

KLEIN, Ethel 1952-

PERSONAL: Born March 20, 1952, in New York, NY; daughter of Ludwig and Anna (Orenstein) Klein. Education: City College of New York, B.A., 1972; University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1980.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—101 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10003-1008.

CAREER: Harvard University, Boston, MA, assistant professor of American politics, 1979-1984; Columbia University, New York, NY, associate professor of American politics, 1984-1990; currently president of EDK Associates (public opinion research firm), New York, NY. Consultant for Ford Foundation, Women's Vote Project, National Organization for Women (NOW) Defense and Education Fund.

MEMBER: American Political Science Association, Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

(With Joyce Gelb) Women's Movements: Organizing for Change in the 1980s, American Political Science Association (Washington, DC), 1983, revised edition, 1987.

Gender Politics: From Consciousness to Mass Politics, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1984.

Ending Domestic Violence: Changing PublicPerceptions/Halting the Epidemic, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1997.

SIDELIGHTS: Ethel Klein has fought for a range of political causes, as an academic and more recently as a campaign strategist. Her books include Gender Politics: From Consciousness to Mass Politics, which focuses on American politics since 1970, and Ending Domestic Violence: Changing Public Perceptions/Halting the Epidemic, which reports on public opinion polls and media campaigns.

While an associate professor at Columbia University, Klein wrote Gender Politics, which argues that, since 1970, women have begun to express their collective political priorities in their vote. She describes conditions in the United States leading up to this change, and, as Art Seidenbaum explained in an review for the Los Angeles Times, "She traces political consciousness as a three-step process: a recognition of group membership and mutual interests; a rejection of the traditional role assigned members of the group; a recognition of discrimination practiced by the present society." Roberta S. Sigel, in the New York Times Book Review, remarked that this account is not novel but that Klein "breaks new ground in her analysis of the different paths men and women take to arrive at a belief in the equality of men and women." Critics remained skeptical about how great a role feminism and group consciousness play in women's vote. Notably, the book suffers from bad timing: it arrived on the heels of the 1984 reelection of Ronald Reagan, whom women—in the same proportion as men—supported, despite his policies in areas Klein identifies as important to women and despite the fact that his opponent's running partner was a woman. In the Times Literary Supplement, David Butler contended that Klein does not have strong evidence to expect better: he pointed out "she relies on poll findings that are only a few per cent apart . . . [and] never faces squarely one difficulty inherent in poll-based research—the logical gap between correlation and explanation."

Klein later started her own firm to research strategies for nonprofit orgnizations. As president of EDK Associates, Klein has designed campaigns to shift public opinion on women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, work and family policies, low-income housing, health education, tax reform, and environmental protection. In an interview published in Evaluation Exchange, Klein explains that work on public campaigns aimed at changing behavior must "focus on the 'social context' surrounding the behavior and increase 'social responsibility' for helping to change it. For example, with AIDS, just saying persuasively 'AIDS will kill you' did not change behavior. Scare tactics just moved people into denial. We learned, from a great deal of public education research and evaluation, to create a broad sense of social responsibility for ending the epidemic and to engage, for example, the gay community in creating a social context where people wouldn't be afraid or ashamed or worry about retribution if they insisted someone use a condom." Klein stresses the need for collaboration and ongoing feedback between campaign evaluators and implementors, explaining "campaigns are evolving and living things."