Janet Zollinger Giele (born 1934) is an American sociologist and Professor Emerita of Sociology, Social Policy, and Women's Studies at Brandeis University.
Her 1961 PhD in sociology from Radcliffe College (of Harvard University) examined changes in the feminine role by comparing temperance and suffrage women's lives and ideology.
A review in Contemporary Sociology criticizes the book for not adequately explaining why women's status improves, either with further modernization, or in revolutionary societies that are not very complex.
In The Craft of Life Course Research (2009) she demonstrates how four key background factors (identity, social networks, personal drive, and adaptive style) differ in white and African-American college-educated women who become either full-time homemakers, or who combine family and career.
[4] She has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations, the German Marshall Fund, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
In 2013, Pepperdine University established the Janet Zollinger Giele Distinguished Life Course Award to recognize women who have overcome significant obstacles to become leaders in their chosen field.
She has served as a lay leader in her church, as a member of Wellesley Town Meeting, an alumni trustee of Earlham College, and Acting Dean of the Heller School.
From 2009 to 2012 she was the founding president of Wellesley Neighbors, a membership organization that is part of the national village movement which helps midlife and older adults continue to live independently.