Professor Blumberg joined the Sociology Department at the University of Virginia in 1998. She is also Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Her academic work revolves around two theories. First is a general theory of gender stratification and the second is an evolving theory of gender and economic development. She has worked on these topics in over 40 countries on every continent except Antarctica. Her recent research interest is about conducting research with UNESCO on gender bias in textbooks worldwide.

 She began with Chairman MAO Zedong’s famous quote “Women hold up half the sky” and then talked about findings of UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2000-2015. She explained that the gist of the quote hasn’t been reflected in real textbooks, since in almost any textbook worldwide we find content related to gender-bias, content that distorts either the role of women or men. She noted that women were rarely written into textbooks and, even when written in, they were stereotypical, traditional representations of women.

       Professor Blumberg then gave a brief overview of her research findings in recent years on gender bias in textbooks worldwide, focusing on reform measures in four specific countries: Chile, Georgia, Pakistan and Thailand. She pointed out that except for Thailand, these cases ended in failure, because the majority stakeholders did not embrace the reforms. To conclude, Professor Blumberg shared her findings about the lecture topic as it related to China.