She told PBS of her activism in Mississippi: It was very, very difficult to continue because the local police and all the towns had almost crushed us.

[2]In 1968, she was appointed assistant professor of sociology and curriculum specialist at the Southern Illinois University at East St. Louis.

In 1969, she became a senior research fellow at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1970, Ladner conducted postdoctoral work as a research associate at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

In 1977, she embarked on a study of "The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the Career Patterns of Ex-Activists," which was funded by the Ford Foundation.

The next year she served on the committee on Evaluation of Poverty Research at the National Academy of Sciences.

[3] She has been a member on the board of directors of the American Sociological Association, of the review committee of the Minority Center for the National Institute of Mental Health, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, on the board of directors of the 21st Century Foundation, on the board of directors of the Caucus of Black Sociologists, the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, the Woman's Forum, the Washington Urban League, Coalition of 100 Black Women, a senior fellow (1969–71) at the Institute of the Black World, a senior fellow in government at the Brookings Institution,[1] a fellow at the Social Science Research Council, has sat on the U.S. Department of Justice's Advisory Council on Violence Against Women, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

[5] Ladner retired in 2003 and moved to a lakeside home in Sarasota, Florida, to be an abstract painter.

She is mentioned in poet Robert Pinksy's "The Poem of Names," which appeared in the October 14, 2019, issue of The New Yorker.