Carrie N. Baker

Carrie N. Baker teaches courses on gender, law and public policy; feminist social movements; and feminist public writing. Baker is affiliated with the American Studies Program, the public policy minor, the archives concentration and the journalism concentration. She also serves on the steering committee of the Five College Certificate in Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice, of which she was a co-founder and former co-director.

Baker has a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from Yale University, a juris doctor degree from Emory University School of Law, and master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees from Emory's Institute of Women's Studies. She was editor-in-chief of the Emory Law Journal while in law school and later served as a law clerk to United States District Court Judge Marvin H. Shoob in Atlanta.

Baker’s primary areas of research are women’s legal history, gender and public policy, and feminist activism. Baker has published four books: Her first book, The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment (Cambridge University Press, 2008), won the National Women’s Studies Association 2008 Sara A. Whaley book prize. This book examines how a diverse grassroots social movement created public policy on sexual harassment in the 1970s and 1980s. Baker’s second book, Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade: Gender, Race, and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2018), tells the story of activism against youth involvement in the sex trade in the United States between 1970 and 2015. Baker has also published a law school textbook, Sexual Harassment Law: History, Cases, and Practice (Carolina Academic Press, 2020), with Jennifer Ann Drobac and Rigel C. Oliveri, and edited an open access anthology on scholarly community engagement with Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Public Feminisms: From Academy to Community (Lever Press, 2022). Her forthcoming book, History and Politics of Abortion Pills in the United States, is forthcoming in 2024 from Amherst College Press.

Baker has published peer-reviewed research in many leading journals, including the Journal of Health Politics, Law and Policy; Contraception: An International Reproductive Health Journal; Regulatory Review; Feminist Studies; Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; Violence Against Women; Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy; Women in Politics; The Journal of Women’s History; and Feminist Formations.

Baker writes extensively for the public. She is a contributing editor for Ms. magazine and has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She is co-chair of the Ms. Committee of Scholars, which encourages and trains scholars to write for the public, and she is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and Women’s Media Center SheSource. Baker hosts a monthly radio program, Feminist Futures, on WHMP 101.5 FM in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Baker has served on the editorial board of Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, and she has served on the governing council of the National Women’s Studies Association for two terms.

Selected Publications

Books

Public Feminisms: From Academy to Community, anthology edited with Aviva Dove-Viebahn (Lever Press, 2023) (available open access).

Sexual Harassment Law: History, Cases, Practice, with Jennifer Ann Drobac and Rigel C. Oliveri. Carolina Academic Press, 2020.

Fighting the US Youth Sex Trade: Gender, Race, and Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Articles

History and Politics of Medication Abortion in the United States and the Rise of Telemedicine and Self-Managed Abortion, Journal of Health Politics, Law and Policy (2023).

Barriers to Medication Abortion Among Massachusetts Public University Students, with Julia Mathis, Contraception: An International Reproductive Health Journal 109: 32-36 (December 27, 2021).

Supreme Court Reinstates Barriers to Abortion By Telemedicine, Regulatory Review, March 15, 2021.

Amplification of Structural Inequalities: Research Sabbaticals During COVID-19, ADVANCE Journal 2, no. 2 (Fall 2020).

Abortion Regulation in the Age of COVID-19, The Regulatory Review, September 21, 2020.

History of Abortion Law in the United States, with OBOS Abortion Contributors, Our Bodies, Ourselves (September 14, 2020, updated March 18, 2022).

Amplifying the Voices of Feminist Scholars in the Press, with Michele Berger, Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Karon Jolna, and Carmen Rios, Feminist Formations, Vol. 32, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 29-51.

Abortion Regulation in the Age of COVID-19, The Regulatory Review, September 21, 2020.

Racialized Rescue Narratives in Public Discourses on Youth Prostitution and Sex Trafficking in the United States, Politics and Gender (2018): 1-28.

Teaching to Empower, Feminist Formations 30(3), 4-15 (2018).

Challenging Narratives of the Anti-Rape Movement’s Decline, Violence Against Women, with Maria Bevacqua, at Online First (March 9, 2017).

Obscuring Gender-Based Violence: Marriage Promotion and Teen Dating Violence Research, with Nan Stein, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy 37:1 (2016): 87-109.

An Examination of the Central Debates on Sex Trafficking in Research and Public Policy in the United States, Journal on Human Trafficking 1:3 (August 2015): 191-208.

An Intersectional Analysis of Sex Trafficking Films, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 12, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 208-226.

Moving Beyond ‘Slaves, Sinners, and Saviors’: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of U.S. Sex Trafficking Discourse, Law and Policy, Journal of Feminist Scholarship Issue 4 (Spring 2013).

The Influence of International Human Trafficking on United States Prostitution Laws: The Case of Expungement Laws, Syracuse Law Review 62 (2012): 171-182.

The Emergence of Organized Feminist Resistance to Sexual Harassment in the United States in the 1970s, Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 3 (Autumn 2007): 161-184.

“Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain!”: Power, Privacy, and the Legal Regulation of Violence Against Women, with Maria Bevacqua, Women & Politics 26, no. 3/4 (Spring 2004): 57-83.

Race, Class, and Sexual Harassment in the 1970s, Feminist Studies 30, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 7-27.

Book Chapters

“Why GWSS Still Matters,” in Persistence is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, ed. by Julie Shayne (University of Washington Pressbooks, 2020).

“Women’s Bodies and Sexuality in the Public Sphere.” In Imagination and the Public Sphere, edited by Susan Cumings, 84-99. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012.

“Sexual Harassment: Law for Women, By Women.” In Feminist Legal History: New Perspectives on Law, edited by Tracy Thomas, 223-239. New York: NYU Press, 2011.

“Speaking in Contradictions: Complex Agency of Battered Women Who Kill.” In Survivor Rhetoric: Construction and Conflict in Abused Women’s Rhetoric, edited by Christine Shearer-Cremean, Linda J. Parks, and Carol L. Winkelmann, 42-63. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

“Blue-Collar Feminists and the Link Between Sexual Harassment and Male Domination.” In Sexual Harassment and Male Domination: An Edited Collection, edited by Jim Gruber and Phoebe Morgan, 243-270. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2004.

“‘He Said, She Said’: Popular Representations of Sexual Harassment and Second-Wave Feminism.” In Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s, edited by Sherrie Inness, 39-53. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

Policy Papers

Giving Birth in a Pandemic: Policy Recommendations to Improve Maternal Equity During COVID-19, MA COVID-19 Maternal Equity Coalition (July 2020) (co-author).

Increase Access to Abortion Pills Via Telemedicine Abortion, Scholars Strategy Network, May 6, 2020.

Ten Legislative Changes Needed to Prevent and Redress Sexual Harassment in All American Workplaces, Scholars Strategy Network, February 1, 2019.

Solving Child Sex Trafficking Requires Addressing the Conditions of Vulnerability, Gender Policy Report, University of Minnesota, December 12, 2018.