Joan C. Williams , Distinguished Professor of Law and 1066 Foundation Chair at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, has played a central role in reshaping the debates over gender, class, and work-family issues for the past quarter century. Williams is founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law and Director of the Project for Attorney Retention (PAR). A prize-winning author and expert on work/family issues, she is author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It (Oxford University Press, 2000), which won the 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. She has authored or co-authored six books and over seventy law review articles. She also has played a central role in organizing social scientists to document maternal wall bias, notably in a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues (2004), co-edited with Monica Biernat and Faye Crosby, which was awarded the Distinguished Publication Award by the Association for Women in Psychology. In 2006, she received the Margaret Brent Award for Women Lawyers of Achievement, and in 2008, she delivered the Massey Lectures in American Civilization at Harvard University. Williams' current research focuses on how work-family conflict differs at different class locations; how gender bias differs by race; and on the role of gender pressures on men in creating work-family conflict and gender inequality.

The culmination of this work is her most recent book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Harvard, 2010).