Margaret Ann Strobel was born February 15, 1946, in Grand Forks, North Dakota in the United States.
[1]: 213 She attended schools in Grand Forks and St. Louis, Missouri, then studied at Michigan State University on a National Merit Scholarship.
[4] A reviewer for the Journal of World History commented "with books like Strobel's, we can now say that we have an idea of the lives of women as well as men".
[3] Strobel received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
In 1993, the University of Illinois Chicago presented her with an award for teaching excellence and as of 2023, she was professor emerita of Gender and Women's Studies there.