Iconic Feminist Who Studied Bikers Barbara Joans Dies At 89

Barbara Joans, who was an anthropologist and feminist icon that covered biker culture throughout her career, has reportedly sadly died at the age of 89.

Her son Howard Schwartz made the announcement of Joans’ passing, saying that the iconic feminist passed away due to a cardiopulmonary failure in an assisted living facility in Virginia.

In the 1960s, Joans road a Harley Davidson motorcycle herself while engaged in research on bikers, particularly women bikers.

Joans began her career by working as an instructor New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village, where she focused primarily on women’s issues. A staunch supporter of abortion, Joans was incredibly politically active around the time of Roe v Wade.

The New York Times reports on her death,

Barbara Joans, an iconoclastic anthropologist and feminist who, in her early 60s, became something of a Margaret Mead in black leather, steering her Harley-Davidson deep into a biker culture and producing the 2001 book, “Bike Lust: Harleys, Women, and American Society,” died on March 6 in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was 89.

The cause of her death, in an assisted living facility, was cardiopulmonary failure, her son Howard Schwartz said.

Ms. Joans, Brooklyn-born, plucky and outspoken, began her career as an instructor at the New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village, with a focus on women’s issues, producing papers on topics like the anthropological aspects of menopause.

Starting in the 1960s, she was also a feminist crusader, helping women arrange illegal abortions in the days before Roe v. Wade. In 1970, she participated in a daylong occupation of The Ladies’ Home Journal’s editorial offices in New York to demand the opportunity to put out a “liberated” version of the magazine.

The New York Times

Joans was a woman who lived her life on her own terms, and fought for what she believed in for the entirety of her existence. Rest in peace Barbara Joans.