Mary Romero is Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University and Affiliate of Women and Gender Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies and African and African American Studies. 

In 2017 Mary received The American Sociological Association’s “Cox-Johnson-Frazier” Award In recognition of a lifetime of research, teaching, and services in the tradition of these outstanding African-American scholars and educators.

She received the American Sociology American Section on Race and Ethnicity Minorities 2009 Founder’s Award [Recognize career excellence in scholarship and service]. In 2004, she received the Society for the Study of Social Problems’ Lee Founders Award 2004, the highest award made by the Society for the Study of Social Problems for a career of activist scholarship. 

She is a former Carnegie Scholar, Pew National Fellowship for Carnegie Scholars, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She is the author of The Maid’s Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American Dream (NYU Press, 2011) and Maid in the U.S.A. (Routledge, 1992, Tenth Anniversary Edition 2002 ) and co-editor of Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities (Blackwell 2005), Latino/a Popular Culture (NYU Press 2002), Women’s Untold Stories: Breaking Silence, Talking Back, Voicing Complexity (Routledge, 1999), Challenging Fronteras: Structuring Latina and Latina Lives in the U.S. (Routledge, 1997), and Women and Work: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Class (Sage, 1997). Her most recent articles are published in Indiana Law Journal, Aztlán, International Journal of Sociology of the Family, Critical Sociology, Contemporary Justice Review, Critical Sociology, Law & Society Review, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Villanova Law Review, and Cleveland State Law Review. She served on the Law and Society Association Board of Trustees (Class of 2008) and the Council of the American Sociological Association (2007-2009). She serves on the international editorial board of Brill’s “Critical Studies in Social Science” and National Review Board of Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. 

Her research focuses on the unequal distribution of reproductive labor as a paid commodity and its role in reproducing inequality among families within countries and between nations. Embedded in feminist legal scholarship on caregiving, this research explores questions from a legal perspective: is work primarily an artifact of family law, or should it be examined through the lens of employment law? Her research also includes writings on social inequalities and justice that incorporate the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and citizenship and links the parallels between domestic gendered race relations and immigration and identifies the continuum between racism against citizens and racism against noncitizens.