Tangri conducted pioneering research on the lives of women who graduated from college and embarked on careers dominated by men.
[6] Tangri credited her feminist identity, and the basis for her politics to her father's strong devotion to social justice and her experience growing up in a working-class Jewish family.
Tangri left academia in 1974 to become Director of the Office of Research at the United States Commission of Civil Rights,[2] where she remained for five years.
[11] Tangri received the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology for her 1976 article "A feminist perspective on ethical issues in population programs".
[12][13] APA Division 35 (Society for the Psychology of Women) previously awarded the Sandra Schwartz Tangri Memorial Award for Graduate Student Research focusing on issues such as "sexual harassment, discrimination, reproductive rights, concerns of ethnic and sexual minority women and the mentoring of first-generation college students.