[2] In the mid-1960s, Bateson became a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, studying Tagalog and helping organize a sociology seminar with businessman Sixto K. Roxas in 1968 to better address housing needs for the SSS Village then being built in the town of Marikina, Rizal.

[3][4] Bateson considered herself an "activist for peace and justice"[5] and stressed the importance in the years of “unanticipated longevity”[5] of continuing to be willing to learn.

Because of her work on aging and the changing role of women in modern society, Bateson has been referred to as one of the most original thinkers of our time.

Then, she shifted her focus from a professional interest in human patterns of communication to highly-formalistic studies, which started her career as an anthropologist.

As graduate students, the young couple purchased, for a sum of $15,000, an 18th-century farmhouse on a wooded 100-acre New Hampshire property that served, in addition to a Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment, as their home for over 50 years.

[13] That book showed how deeply connected Bateson's own journey as a scholar as parallel was to a world in which she and other women faced overt sexism and female inferiority.