Barbara Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich was born to Isabelle ({{nee}} Oxley) and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town".{{cite news|last=Ehrenreich |first=Barbara |title=About Barbara |url=http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/barbara_ehrenreich.htm |access-date=May 8, 2011 |newspaper=barbaraehrenreich.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110623005647/http://barbaraehrenreich.com/barbara_ehrenreich.htm |archive-date=June 23, 2011 }} In an interview on C-SPAN, she characterized her parents as "strong union people" with two family rules: "never cross a picket line and never vote Republican".{{cite news|interviewer=Lamb, Brian|title=Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class: Barbara Ehrenreich Interview Transcript|url=http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/9435-1/Barbara-Ehrenreich.aspx|access-date=May 8, 2011|newspaper=Booknotes (C-SPAN)|date=October 18, 1989}} In a talk she gave in 1999, Ehrenreich called herself a "fourth-generation atheist".{{cite web|last=Ehrenreich|first=((Barbara))|title=My Family Values Atheism: Acceptance speech upon receiving the 1999 Freethought Heroine Award|url=http://www.ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/2000/april2000/ehrenreich.html|publisher=Freedom From Religion Foundation|access-date=May 9, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927022631/http://www.ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/2000/april2000/ehrenreich.html|archive-date=September 27, 2011|url-status=dead}} Later in life, she wrote that she rejected "the God of monotheism" because of the philosophical problem of a being that was all good and all powerful, when people were living with "all the misery he allowed or instigated".{{Cite book |last=Ehrenreich |first=Barbara |title=Living with a wild God: a nonbeliever's search for the truth about everything |date=2014 |publisher=Twelve |isbn=978-1-4555-0176-2 |edition=First |location=New York |chapter=Return to the Quest}} She had mystical experiences throughout her life, which she identified as belonging to a type animism rather than theism.

"As a little girl", she told The New York Times in 1993, "I would go to school and have to decide if my parents were the evil people they were talking about, part of the Red Menace we read about in the Weekly Reader, just because my mother was a liberal Democrat who would always talk about racial injustice."{{cite news|last=Edwards|first=Ivana|title=Barbara Ehrenreich's Writing Attracts an Attentive Audience|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/17/nyregion/barbara-ehrenreich-s-writing-attracts-an-attentive-audience.html?pagewanted=2|access-date=May 8, 2011|newspaper=The New York Times|date=October 17, 1993}} Her mother was a deeply unhappy homemaker.{{Cite book |last=Ehrenreich |first=Barbara |title=Living with a wild God: a nonbeliever's search for the truth about everything |date=2014 |publisher=Twelve |isbn=978-1-4555-0176-2 |edition=First |location=New York |chapter=Anomalous Oscillations}} Her father was a copper miner who went to the Montana School of Mines (renamed Montana Technological University in 2018{{Cite news |title=Montana Tech officially renamed Montana Technological University |newspaper=The Montana Standard |url=https://mtstandard.com/news/local/montana-tech-officially-renamed-montana-technological-university/article_a8e74359-6279-5293-ab55-ce4fc0b90bb6.html |date=May 24, 2018 |last=McDermott |first=Ted |access-date=November 29, 2018}}) and then to Carnegie Mellon University. A high-functioning alcoholic, he strongly valued intelligence.

After her father graduated from the Montana School of Mines, the family moved to Pittsburgh, New York, and Massachusetts, before settling down in Los Angeles.{{Cite web|date=December 16, 2011|title=Ehrenreich, Barbara. Papers of Barbara Ehrenreich, 1922–2007 (inclusive), 1963–2007 (bulk): A Finding Aid|url=http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01203|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111216220246/http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01203|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 16, 2011|access-date=December 16, 2020}} He eventually became a senior executive at the Gillette Corporation. Her parents later divorced.

Ehrenreich studied physics at Reed College, switched to chemistry, graduating in 1963. Her senior thesis was Electrochemical oscillations of the silicon anode. In 1968, she enrolled in a theoretical physics Ph.D, but changed early on to cellular immunology and received her Ph.D at Rockefeller University.{{cite AV media|url=http://vimeo.com/channels/theschooloflife#10454695|title=The School of Life|access-date=May 12, 2016}}

In 1970, Ehrenreich gave birth to her daughter Rosa in a public clinic in New York. "I was the only white patient at the clinic, and I found out this was the health care women got," she told The Globe and Mail newspaper in 1987, "They induced my labor because it was late in the evening and the doctor wanted to go home. I was enraged. The experience made me a feminist."{{ProQuest|734005592}}

After completing her doctorate, Ehrenreich did not pursue a career in science. Instead, she worked first as an analyst with the Bureau of the Budget in New York City and with the Health Policy Advisory Center, and later as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.

In 1972, Ehrenreich began co-teaching a course on women and health with feminist journalist and academic Deirdre English. Through the rest of the seventies, Ehrenreich worked mostly in health-related research, advocacy and activism, including co-writing, with English, several feminist books and pamphlets on the history and politics of women's health. During this period she began speaking frequently at conferences staged by women's health centers and women's groups, by universities, and by the United States government. She also spoke regularly about socialist feminism and about feminism in general.{{cite web|title=Papers of Barbara Ehrenreich, 1922–2007 (inclusive), 1963–2007 (bulk): A Finding Aid|url=http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01203|publisher=Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University|access-date=May 8, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111216220246/http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01203|archive-date=December 16, 2011|url-status=dead}}

Throughout her career, Ehrenreich worked as a freelance writer. She is arguably best known for her non-fiction reportage, book reviews and social commentary. Her reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times Book Review supplement, Vogue, Salon.com, TV Guide, Mirabella and American Film. Her essays, op-eds and feature articles have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Life, Mother Jones, Ms., The Nation, The New Republic, the New Statesman, In These Times, The Progressive, Working Woman, and Z Magazine.

Ehrenreich served as founder, advisor or board member to a number of organizations including the National Women's Health Network, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse, the Nationwide Women's Program of the American Friends Service Committee, the Brooklyn-based Association for Union Democracy, the Boehm Foundation, the Women's Committee of 100, the National Writers Union, the Progressive Media Project, FAIR's advisory committee on women in the media, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and the Campaign for America's Future.

Between 1979 and 1981, she served as an adjunct associate professor at New York University and as a visiting professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia and at Sangamon State University (Now University of Illinois, Springfield.) She lectured at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was a writer-in-residence at the Ohio State University, Wayne Morse chair at the University of Oregon, and a teaching fellow at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the New York-based Society of American Historians.

In 2000, Ehrenreich endorsed the presidential campaign of Ralph Nader; in 2004, she urged voters to support John Kerry in the swing states.[http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0914-20.htm Nader's Top Endorsers From 2000 Urge "Swing States" Support for Kerry] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304111708/http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0914-20.htm |date=March 4, 2016 }}, Common Dreams, September 14, 2004

In February 2008, she expressed support for then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.[http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/02/unstoppable-oba.html "Unstoppable Obama"],

ehrenreich.blogs.com. February 14, 2008

In 2001, Ehrenreich published her seminal work, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Seeking to explore whether people can subsist on minimum wage in the United States, she worked "undercover" in a series of minimum-wage jobs, such as waitress, housekeeper, and Wal-Mart associate, and reported on her efforts to pay living expenses with the low wages paid by those jobs (an average of $7 per hour). She concluded that it was impossible to pay for food and rent without working at least two such jobs. Nickel and Dimed became a bestseller and admirers regard the book as "a classic of social justice literature."{{Cite news |last=Schachar |first=Natalie |date=September 2, 2022 |title=Barbara Ehrenreich, Explorer of Prosperity's Dark Side, Dies at 81 |language=en-US |volume=171 |page=B12 |work=New York Times |issue=59535 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/books/barbara-ehrenreich-dead.html |access-date=September 2, 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}

Ehrenreich founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project with one main purpose: support immersive reporting on the working poor, in the manner of Ehrenreich's own Nickel and Dimed.{{cite web |url=http://economichardship.org/about-1 |title=About |website=Economic Hardship Reporting Project |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150921223908/http://economichardship.org/about-1 |archive-date=21 September 2015 |url-status=dead}}

Filling in for a vacationing Thomas Friedman as a columnist with The New York Times in 2004, Ehrenreich wrote about how, in the fight for women's reproductive rights, "it's the women who shrink from acknowledging their own abortions who really irk me" and said that she herself "had two abortions during my all-too-fertile years".{{cite news|last=Ehrenreich|first=Barbara|title=Owning Up To Abortion|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/opinion/owning-up-to-abortion.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm|access-date=May 9, 2011|newspaper=The New York Times|date=July 22, 2004}}

In her 1990 book of essays, The Worst Years of Our Lives, she wrote that "the one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks."{{cite book|last=Andrews|first=Robert|title=The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations|year=1993|publisher=Columbia University Press|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/columbiadictiona00andr/page/n42 3]|isbn=9780231071949|url=https://archive.org/details/columbiadictiona00andr|url-access=registration|quote=The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks..}}

In 2005, The New Yorker called her "a veteran muckraker".{{cite news|title=Books Briefly Noted: Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich|url=http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/09/26/050926crbn_brieflynoted3|access-date=May 9, 2011|newspaper=New Yorker|date=September 2005}}

In 2006, she founded United Professionals, an organization described as "a nonprofit, non-partisan membership organization for white-collar workers, regardless of profession or employment status. We reach out to all unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed workers—people who bought the American dream that education and credentials could lead to a secure middle class life, but now find their lives disrupted by forces beyond their control."

{{cite web | url=http://www.unitedprofessionals.org/about/ | publisher=United Professionals | title=About United Professionals | access-date=October 4, 2008 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081010002507/http://www.unitedprofessionals.org/about/ | archive-date=October 10, 2008 | url-status=dead }}

In 2009, she wrote Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America (published in the UK as Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World), which investigated the rise of the positive thinking industry in the United States. She included her own experience after being told that she had breast cancer as a starting point in the book.{{cite web |title=Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich |url=http://www.scienceandreason.ca/book_reviews/bright-sided-how-positive-thinking-is-undermining-america-by-barbara-ehrenreich/ |website=www.scienceandreason.ca |date=February 13, 2011 |publisher=Association for science and reason |access-date=December 21, 2018}} In this book, she brought to light various methods of what Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann called "quantum flapdoodle".{{cite news |title=Author's Personal Forecast: Not Always Sunny, but Pleasantly Skeptical |last=Cohen |first=Patricia |date=October 9, 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/books/10ehrenreich.html |access-date=December 21, 2018 |department=Reviews |newspaper=The New York Times}}

Beginning in 2013, Ehrenreich was an honorary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. She also served on the NORML board of directors, the Institute for Policy Studies board of trustees and the editorial board of The Nation. She has served on the editorial boards of Social Policy, Ms., Mother Jones, Seven Days, Lear's, The New Press, and Culturefront, and as a contributing editor to Harper's.

Image:Barbara Ehrenreich by David Shankbone.jpg discussion]]

• {{cite book|title=Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad|year=1969|isbn=9780853450863|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |last2=Ehrenreich |first2=John |publisher=Monthly Review Press }} (with John Ehrenreich)
• {{cite book|title=The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics|year=1971|isbn=9780394714530|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing }} (with John Ehrenreich and Health PAC)
• {{cite book|title=Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers|year=1972|isbn=0912670134|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |last2=English |first2=Deirdre |publisher=Feminist Press }} (with Deirdre English)
• {{cite book|title=Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness|year=1973|isbn=9781558616950|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |last2=English |first2=Deirdre |publisher=Feminist Press at CUNY }} (with Deirdre English)
• {{cite book|title=For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women|year=1978|isbn=9780385126502|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |last2=English |first2=Deirdre |publisher=Anchor Press }} (with Deirdre English)
• {{cite book|title=Women in the Global Factory|year=1983|isbn=9780896081987|last1=Fuentes |first1=Annette |last2=Fuentes |first2=Carlos |last3=Ehrenreich |first3=Barbara |publisher=South End Press }}
• {{cite book|title=The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment|year=1983|isbn=9780385176149|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Anchor Press/Doubleday }}
• {{cite book|title=Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex|year=1986|isbn=9780385184984|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |last2=Hess |first2=Elizabeth |last3=Jacobs |first3=Gloria |publisher=Anchor Press/Doubleday }} (with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs)
• {{cite book|title=The Mean Season: Attack on the Welfare State|year=1987|isbn=9780394744506|last1=Block |first1=Fred L. |last2=Cloward |first2=Richard A. |last3=Piven |first3=Frances Fox |publisher=Pantheon Books }} (with Fred L. Block, Richard A. Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven)
• {{cite book|title=Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class|year=1989|isbn=9780394556925|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Pantheon Books }}
• {{cite book|title=The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed|year=1990|isbn=9780060973841|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=HarperPerennial }}
• {{cite book|title=The Snarling Citizen: Essays|year=1995|isbn=9780374266486|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux }}
• {{cite book|title=Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War|year=1997|isbn=9780756754389|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=DIANE Publishing Company }}
• {{cite book|title=Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America|year=2001|isbn=9780805063882|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Macmillan }}
• {{cite book|title=Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy|year=2003|isbn=9780805069952 |last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |last2=Hochschild |first2=Arlie Russell |publisher=Macmillan }} (ed., with Arlie Hochschild)
• {{cite book|title=Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream|year=2005|isbn=9780805076066|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Macmillan }}
• {{cite book|title=Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy|year=2007|isbn=9780805057232|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Macmillan }}
• {{cite book | last=Ehrenreich | first=Barbara | title=This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation | publisher=Metropolitan Books | publication-place=New York | year=2008 | isbn=978-0-8050-8840-3 | oclc=182737659|url=https://archive.org/details/thislandistheirl0000ehre}}
• {{cite book | last=Ehrenreich | first=Barbara | title=Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America | publisher=Metropolitan Books | publication-place=New York | year=2009 | isbn=978-0-8050-8749-9 | oclc=317928923|url=https://archive.org/details/brightsidedhowre00ehre}} (UK: Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World)
• {{cite book | last=Ehrenreich | first=Barbara | title=Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything | publisher=Twelve | publication-place=New York | year=2014 | isbn=978-1-4555-0176-2 | oclc=856053601|url=https://archive.org/details/livingwithwildgo0000ehre}}
• {{cite book | last=Ehrenreich | first=Barbara | title=Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer | publisher=Twelve | publication-place=New York | year=2018 | isbn=978-1-4789-6126-0 | oclc=1039523821}}
• {{cite book|year=2020|title=Had I Known: Collected Essays|isbn=978-1-4555-4369-4|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Twelve }}

; Fiction

• {{cite book|title=Kipper's Game|year=1993|isbn=9780374181550|last1=Ehrenreich |first1=Barbara |publisher=Farrar, Straus, Giroux }}

• {{cite book|last1=Ehrenreich|first1=John and Barbara|chapter=The Professional-Managerial Class|title=Between Labor and Capitol|year=1979 |publisher=South End Press|isbn=978-0896080386}}
• [https://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1979/11/ehrenreich.html "The Charge: Gynocide"], investigative journalism about the Dalkon Shield in the third world, Mother Jones, November/December, 1979.
• "[https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974698,00.html Making Sense of La Difference]", Time, 1992.
• "[https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979229,00.html Burt, Loni and Our Way of Life]", Time, September 20, 1993.
• "[https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,133478,00.html In Defense of Talk Shows]", Time, December 4, 1995.
• "[http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Ehrenreich.html The New Creationism: Biology Under Attack"] The Nation, June 9, 1997.
• "{{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020217090106/http://www.geocities.com/i_sang_holy_holy/time_essay.html |date=February 17, 2002 |title=How 'Natural' Is Rape? Despite a Daffy New Theory, It's Not Just a Guy in Touch with His Inner Caveman" }}, Time, January 31, 2000.
• [https://pinkribbonblues.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Ehrenreich-2001-WelcomeToCancerland-Harpers.pdf "Welcome to Cancerland"], Harper's Magazine, November 2001. National Magazine Award finalist
• "A New Counterterrorism Strategy: Feminism", AlterNet, 2005.
• "[https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568483,00.html Fight for Your Right to Party]" Time, December 18, 2006.
• {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120630012913/http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/22-4|title= "My Unwitting Role in Acts of Torture"}}, The Guardian, February 22, 2009.
• [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html "Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?"], The New York Times, August 9, 2009.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20091022105323/http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/1354/barbara_ehrenreich_are_women_g/ "Are Women Getting Sadder? Or Are We All Just Getting a Lot More Gullible?"], Guernica, October 13, 2009.
• [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/02/cancer-positive-thinking-barbara-ehrenreich "Smile! You've got cancer"], The Guardian, January 2, 2010.
• [http://rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/sonst_publikationen/ehrenreich_death_of_a_yuppie_dream90.pdf Death of a Yuppie Dream – The Rise and Fall of the Professional-Managerial Class] February 12, 2013.

In 1980, Ehrenreich shared the National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting with colleagues at Mother Jones magazine {{cite web|title=National Magazine Awards Database of Past Winners and Finalists|url=http://www.magazine.org/asme/magazine_awards/searchable_database/index.aspx|publisher=American Society of Magazine Editors|access-date=May 8, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110526232156/http://www.magazine.org/asme/magazine_awards/searchable_database/index.aspx|archive-date=May 26, 2011|url-status=dead}} for the cover story The Corporate Crime of the Century,{{cite news|title=Columnist Biography: Barbara Ehrenreich|url=https://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/ehrenreich-bio.html|access-date=May 8, 2011|newspaper=The New York Times|date=July 1, 2004}} about "what happens after the U.S. government forces a dangerous drug, pesticide or other product off the domestic market, then the manufacturer sells that same product, frequently with the direct support of the State Department, throughout the rest of the world."{{cite news|last=Dowie|first=Mark|title=The Corporate Crime of the Century|url=http://motherjones.com/toc/1979/11/table-contents|access-date=May 8, 2011|newspaper=Mother Jones|year=1979|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121006204928/https://www.motherjones.com/toc/1979/11/table-contents|archive-date=October 6, 2012}}

In 1998 the American Humanist Association named her "Humanist of the Year".{{cite web|title=Humanist of the Year|url=http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_the_AHA/Humanists_of_the_Year|publisher=American Humanist Association|access-date=May 8, 2011| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110522103346/http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/about_the_AHA/Humanists_of_the_Year| archive-date= May 22, 2011 | url-status= live}}

In 2000, she received the Sidney Hillman Award for journalism for the Harper's article "Nickel and Dimed", which was later published as a chapter in her book of the same title.{{cite web|title=Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism |url=http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/hillman-prizes/hillman-prize-magazine-journalism |publisher=Sidney Hillman Foundation |access-date=May 8, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110503214236/http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/hillman-prizes/hillman-prize-magazine-journalism |archive-date=May 3, 2011 }}

In 2002, she won a National Magazine Award for her essay "Welcome to Cancerland: A mammogram leads to a cult of pink kitsch", which describes Ehrenreich's own experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer, and describes what she calls the "breast cancer cult," which "serves as an accomplice in global poisoning – normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience."{{cite web|title=Harper's Magazine Awards and Honors|url=http://www.harpers.org/advertising/pdfs-2008-10/Harpers_Magazine_AwardsAndHonors.pdf |access-date=May 8, 2011}}{{cite news|last=Ehrenreich |first=Barbara |title=Welcome To Cancerland |url=http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/cancerland.htm |access-date=May 8, 2011 |newspaper=Harper's Magazine |date=November 2001 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110609202708/http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/cancerland.htm |archive-date=June 9, 2011 |url-status=dead }}

In 2004, she received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship,{{cite web|title=Barbara Ehrenreich At McGill, Thursday, Nov. 18, 6:30|date=November 14, 2010|url=http://neath.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/barbara-ehrenreich-at-mcgill-thursday-nov-18-630/|publisher=McGill University|access-date=May 8, 2011}} awarded jointly by the Puffin Foundation of New Jersey and The Nation Institute to an American who challenges the status quo "through distinctive, courageous, imaginative, socially responsible work of significance".{{cite web|title=Puffin Foundation: Puffin Nation Award For Creative Citizenship|url=http://www.puffinfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23:puffin-nation-award-for-creative-citizenship&catid=5:projects&Itemid=37|publisher=Puffin Foundation|access-date=May 8, 2011}}

In 2007, she received the "Freedom from Want" Medal, awarded by the Roosevelt Institute in celebration of "those whose life's work embodies FDR's Four Freedoms".{{cite web

|title=Four Freedoms Award: Celebrating those whose life's work embodies FDR's Four Freedoms

|url=http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/four-freedoms-medals

|publisher=Roosevelt Institute

|access-date=May 8, 2011 |url-status=dead

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110725121827/http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/four-freedoms-medals

|archive-date=July 25, 2011 }}

Ehrenreich received a Ford Foundation award for humanistic perspectives on contemporary society (1982), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1987–88) and a grant for research and writing from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1995). She received honorary degrees from Reed College, the State University of New York at Old Westbury, the College of Wooster in Ohio, John Jay College, UMass Lowell and La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

In November 2018, Ehrenreich received the Erasmus Prize by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands for her work in investigative journalism.{{Cite web|url=http://www.erasmusprijs.org/Nieuws?mode=detail&item=Press+release+2018+Erasmus+Prize+awarded+to+Barbara+Ehrenreich&lang=en|title=Press release: 2018 Erasmus Prize awarded to Barbara Ehrenreich|date=March 1, 2018|website=www.erasmusprijs.org|publisher=Stichting Praemium Erasmianum|language=en|access-date=June 15, 2018}}

Ehrenreich had one brother, Ben Alexander Jr., and one sister, Diane Alexander. When she was 35, according to the book Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, her mother died "from a likely suicide".{{cite book |editor1-last=Gilbert |editor1-first=Allison |editor2-first=Christina Baker |editor2-last=Kline |title=Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents |year=2006 |publisher=Seal Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/alwaystoosoonvoi00gilb/page/269 269] |url=https://archive.org/details/alwaystoosoonvoi00gilb |url-access=registration |isbn=978-1-58005-176-7}} Her father died years later from Alzheimer's disease.

Ehrenreich was married and divorced twice. She met her first husband, John Ehrenreich, during an anti-war activism campaign in New York City, and they married in 1966. He is a clinical psychologist,{{cite web|title=Bitters and Cream (personal site)|url=http://www.bittersandcream.com/index.php?p=1_4_About-Me|publisher=John Ehrenreich|access-date=May 9, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110910174121/http://www.bittersandcream.com/index.php?p=1_4_About-Me|archive-date=September 10, 2011|url-status=dead}} and they co-wrote several books about health policy and labor issues before divorcing in 1977. In 1983, she married Gary Stevenson, a union organizer for the Teamsters. She divorced Stevenson in 1993.

Ehrenreich had two children with her first husband. Her daughter Rosa, born in 1970, was named after a great-grandmother and Rosa Luxemburg.{{cite news|last=Sherman|first=Scott|title=Class Warrior: Barbara Ehrenreich's Singular Crusade|url=https://groups.yahoo.com/group/DemocraticLeft/message/11149|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130209185151/http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DemocraticLeft/message/11149|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 9, 2013|access-date=May 9, 2011|newspaper=Columbia Journalism Review|date=June 2003}} She is a Virginia-based law professor, national security and foreign policy expert and writer.{{cite web|url=https://foreignpolicy.com/author/RosaBrooks|work=Foreign Policy |title=Rosa Brooks |access-date=May 12, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120821121831/https://foreignpolicy.com/author/RosaBrooks |archive-date=August 21, 2012}} Ehrenreich's son Ben, born in 1972, is a novelist and a journalist in Los Angeles.{{Cite news|url=http://www.businessinsider.com/ben-ehrenreich-david-grann-new-yorker-gq-atlantic-2011-5|title=Meet The Los Angeles Writer Who Beat The New Yorker, GQ, And The Atlantic|work=Business Insider|access-date=March 22, 2017|language=en}}

Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the release of her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. This led to the award-winning article "Welcome to Cancerland," published in the November 2001 issue of Harper's Magazine. The piece inspired the 2011 documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc.{{cite news|last=Szklarski|first=Cassandra|title=NFB doc examines the politics of marketing disease|url=https://www.ctvnews.ca/nfb-doc-examines-the-politics-of-marketing-disease-1.761701|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130101025754/http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Entertainment/20120131/nfb-breast-cancer-documentary-120131/|url-status=live|archive-date=January 1, 2013|access-date=January 31, 2012|newspaper=CTV News|date=January 31, 2012|agency=Canadian Press}}

Ehrenreich lived in Alexandria, Virginia,{{cite news|last=Ehrenreich|first=Barbara|title=Huffington Post Biography|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich|access-date=May 8, 2011|work=The Huffington Post}} where she died at a hospice facility on September 1, 2022, from a stroke, six days after her 81st birthday. Her New York Times obituary called her an "Explorer of Prosperity's Dark Side" for her commentary of inequality in the United States.{{Cite web |last=Dreier |first=Peter |date=September 7, 2022 |title=Barbara Ehrenreich Made Socialist Ideas Sound Like Common Sense |url=https://jacobin.com/2022/09/barbara-ehrenreich-activism-writing-socialism |access-date=September 8, 2022 |website=Jacobin |language=}}

{{Reflist|2}}

{{Wikiquote}}

{{Commons category}}

• {{Official website|http://barbaraehrenreich.com/}}
• [http://ehrenreich.blogs.com Barbara Ehrenreich's blog]
• [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/barbara-ehrenreich-is-not-an-optimist-but-she-has-hope-for-the-future Interview] with Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker, March 21, 2020.
• {{C-SPAN|12004}}
• [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch01203 Papers of Barbara Ehrenreich, 1922–2007 (inclusive), 1963–2007 (bulk).] [https://web.archive.org/web/20041016004838/http://www.sfbg.com/lit/march00/smile.html Schlesinger Library], Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
• {{IMDb name|1711082}}

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