In 1950 Sanger graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude from Smith College, with a degree in Government.

She told the New York Times later that "'the only place women were allowed then was in Religious Programming,' noting that when she quit as WNBC's manager of Public Affairs in 1961 she was replaced in the job by two men each making twice as much as she had.

[4] It took a Title IX challenge by the National Organization for Women of ABC's allegedly discriminatory hiring and programming practices, and a long-standing working relationship with the head of Sports, Roone Arledge, for Sanger to be re-hired by ABC Sports as a full-fledged Producer, Writer, and Director in 1973; a post she held full-time through 1986.

In addition, Sanger's trips to China and North Korea covering ping pong tournaments, made her a unique academic resource on how the Western media was treated early on.

[5] Sanger received the Smith College Medal in 1982, awarded to "those alumnae who, in the judgment of the trustees, exemplify in their lives and work the true purpose of a liberal arts education."

She was a founding Editor of Ms. Magazine (1972), and on the Advisory Board of the National Women's Conference to Prevent Nuclear War (1974).

Before she died of cancer in 1993, Sanger moved back to Martha's Vineyard, a place she first visited in the 1930s and 40s,[8] where she was married to Riger, and summered in Edgartown and later West Tisbury.