Kathleen Barry

Kathleen Barry (born January 22, 1941) is an American sociologist and feminist. After researching and publishing books on international human sex trafficking, she co-founded the United Nations NGO, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW). In 1985, she received the Wonder Woman Foundation Award for her strides towards the empowerment of women. She has taught at Brandeis University and Penn State University.

Works Barry's first book, Female Sexual Slavery (1979), prompted international awareness of human sex trafficking and has been translated into six languages. She further concludes that the normalization and acceptance of prostitution based on arguments of prostitutes' consent ignores the human-rights principle that violation cannot be consented to. She states that women, as members of an oppressed class under patriarchy, are compelled to "consent" to their own sexual exploitation by society, much in the way a Marxist would say workers are compelled to cooperate with their oppressors, the capitalists.

Education Barry has two Ph.Ds from the University of California, Berkeley, one in sociology and one in education. Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves, 2010

Other writings "The Vagina on Trial" (1971)