She earned a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1950 (her dissertation was titled "Investment Policies of Large Corporations"), after pausing in her studies to work as an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.
[1] From 1971 to 1981, she was a program director for the Ford Foundation, and as such granted approximately $5 million in seed money to several dozen academic studies, sociological projects, and statistical surveys that led to the founding of women's studies departments and public policy research programs.
In 1977, she gave a small grant to help establish the National Women’s Studies Association.
[2] In 1982, Chamberlain left the Ford Foundation to head the Task Force on Women in Higher Education at the Russell Sage Foundation, which published Women in Academe: Progress and Prospects.
[3] She was also a founding member of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and served on its board of directors for almost 20 years; it endowed the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship in Women and Public Policy in her honor.