Marilyn Safir is an American psychologist who played a critical role as a feminist activist in sparking the Israeli women’s movement and in establishing the academic field of women’s studies in Israel. Her academic career has focused on sex, sexuality, and gender. She was also instrumental in establishing the fields of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Sex Therapy in Israel, teaching the first courses on these subjects in Israeli universities. 

Safir was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 27, 1938, to Fannie Teitler Safir (1904-1973) and Charles J. Safir (1898-1963). She has one sister, Suellen Safir Rubin, PhD (b. 1944), who received a PhD in social and personality psychology and has worked most recently as a health psychologist. Assuming his first child would be a boy, Safir’s father purchased a Lionel train set, Tinker Toys, and toy trucks and cars while awaiting her birth. He then spent hours every week playing with her, sparking her interest from a young age in cars, building, and toys in those days typically intended for boys. Since she had already been working with tools on projects with her father, in elementary school she fought to take “shop,” at the time only open to boys, but she was still forced to take the girls’ course in Home Economics (cooking and sewing).

Safir’s next experience with gender stereotyping occurred in her general science class in 8^th grade. Even though she received grades of 100% and As on all her tests and projects, her science teacher gave her a grade of 98%, while the boy who was the next highest student received a final grade of 100%. When she went to the teacher for an explanation, he told her that education was important for boys who need to study and develop a career, while women would stay home and take care of  the children. 

At Brooklyn College, where she received a BA in Psychology in 1959, Safir organized a college-wide protest (supported by most of the faculty) against a requirement established by the Dean of Students that women could not wear jeans to school. There she also experienced what we now call sexual discrimination. She started her studies as a pre-med student, in classes where women were less than 10% of the students. When she joined the pre-med club, the faculty advisor announced that recommendations were given to the top 15% of the male students, but only to 2% of the female students. When Safir angrily asked why, he told the large group  of primarily male students that medical schools did not want to waste their space on women who would drop out to marry and have children. 

Safir’s experiences with discrimination led her to become involved in social activism beginning in her college days. While attending graduate school at Syracuse University, she was active in the Civil Rights Movement. She was trained in community organizing by Saul Alinsky (who later trained Barak Obama) for activities, including voter registration, in the 15^th ward, Syracuse’s major Black community. In 1966, she participated in the Meredith March, led by author James Meredith, from Tennessee through Mississippi. Following Stokely Carmichael’s famous speech  in Canton, Mississippi, however, it became clear that whites and women were no longer welcomed in the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1968, after completing her PhD in Clinical Psychology and Research Methodology at Syracuse University, Safir moved to Israel, where—with a female Prime Minister, women serving in the army, and the theoretically egalitarian kibbutz movement—women’s status appeared to be more advanced. Safir quickly discovered, however, that much of this supposed equality was a myth. 

Safir soon became a pioneer of Israel's new Women's Movement, which began in Haifa in 1970. Because of her experience leading groups, she designed the first Consciousness Raising groups in Israel, which formed the basis for the new Women's Liberation Movement. Safir’s experiences in the Civil Rights Movement often led to similar activist work in Israel. 

Safir also played a pioneering role in establishing the academic field of Women’s Studies in Israel. In 1972, she met American feminist psychologist Martha Mednick, who was on sabbatical in Israel doing research on women and the kibbutz. Mednick introduced Safir to the academic field of Women's Studies and brought her into the American Psychological Association’s Division 35 Psychology of Women and Women’s Studies. Safir began to do research on women in Israel, which led to her becoming a co-editor of several books in this field, as well as numerous articles on women in Israel, female sexuality, gender roles, and related topics. In 1981, Safir and Mednick organized the First International Interdisciplinary Conference on Women: Women’s Worlds, the first major international feminist women's studies congress, at the University of Haifa. There were 700 participants, including the first academic from Egypt to publicly appear in Israel. As a result of this conference, an international network of feminist women’s studies scholars and activists was formed, leading to a series of thirteen additional international conferences (Groningen, Netherlands, 1984; Dublin, Ireland, 1987; New York City, 1990; San Jose, Costa Rica, 1993; Adelaide, Australia 1996; Tromso, Norway, 1999; Kampala, Uganda, 2002;  Seoul, South Korea, in 2005; Madrid, Spain in 2008; Ottawa, Canada, in 2011; and Hyderabad, India in 2014). The thirteenth conference was held in Brazil; the fourteenth was to be held in Mozambique in 2020 but was canceled because of Covid. Safir was instrumental in establishing an international network of Women Studies scholars that has formed the core of support for these congresses. She was also the Founder and served as Director from 1983 to 1993 of the first Women’s Studies program in Israel established at  the University of Haifa in 1982. In 2012, MA and PhD programs in Women’s Studies were opened.

Safir was also the academic advisor for and then Director of Kidma (an acronym for the Project for the Advancement of Women), which closed in June 2011. Kidma ran leadership training workshops and programs for women from disadvantaged communities and villages in multicultural and mixed socioeconomic groups. In the 1980s, it developed the first courses in Israel to teach current theories of violence within the family to police officers. The majority of senior officers underwent this training and eventually these courses became a regular part of the Police Academy curriculum. 

Safir was a founding member of the Executive Committee and first President (1998-2002) of the Israel Association for Feminist and Gender Studies (IAFGS). She was also a Founding Director and President of the Board of Nisan: Young Women’s Leadership Program (1995-2001) and in 1984 was one of the founders of the Israel Women's Network (IWN), serving three terms on its Executive Board.

Safir has been an innovator, teaching the first Cognitive Behavior and Sex Therapy Courses and the first courses on the Psychology of Women and Gender at Israeli universities. She was a founder of and the second President of the Israeli Association of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (ITA). She was also a founder of the Israeli Association for Sex Therapy (ITAM) and served on its Board of Directors. She served as a founder (with Dr. Zev Segal) of and supervised volunteers at both ERAN: Emergency Psychological Telephone Service and the Rape Crisis Hotline, and she is active in a range of women's advocacy organizations. She was appointed by Prime Minister Shimon Peres as Director of the National Commission on the Advancement for the Status of Women, serving from 1986 to 1991.

Safir also initiated and runs an electronic network, the Israel Feminist Forum, which has over 400 subscribers internationally who discuss current feminist issues in Israel. She also initiated and ran the IAFGS-Israel Association for Feminist and Gender Studieselectronic list from 1993 to1996 (now at Bar Ilan University). 

Safir served on the Minister of Economics’ Committee to improve the Economic Status of Women. From 1992 to 2010, she served on the Board of the Institute for Cross-cultural and Cross-ethnic Studies at Molloy College in New York, and she served on the Advisory Board of the MAFERR (Male Female Role Research) Foundation from 1985 to 2009. From 1984 to 1987, she served as a Consultant and Advisor to the Commander of CHEN, the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, for special projects. She served on the Prime Minister’s Committee to Investigate the Lack of Symmetry of Boys and Girls in Israel on Intelligence Tests in 1986 and received a letter of appreciation from Prime Minister Peres.

Safir spent two sabbaticals at Stanford University, as Visiting Scholar at the Center for Research on Women and Visiting Professor in Psychology in 1982-1983 and in 1994, when she split her time in the second semester between the University of Washington's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Stanford University. In 2005-2006, Safir was a Visiting Professor in Psychology and a Consultant to the Department of Women's Studies at Arizona State University.

Safir is a member of numerous professional organizations and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, of which she is a founding member. She is a member of the American Psychological Association Interdisciplinary Task Force on Covid,  which has collected and disseminated materials on all aspects of the pandemic to both professionals and the general public, as well as hosting zoom meetings and webinars. Safir serves on three specific task forces created to deal with various aspects of Covid, including PTSD: Interpersonal Violence (IVP),  Covid and Active Elders who live independently during the pandemic, and Negative Effects of Long Covid.

Safir was married to Efraim Mizrahi (1940-2019) and has two children, Noam Mizrahi Aks (b. 1970) and Liana Mizrahi (b. 1976).

• Elin Wagner Stipend, Stockholm, Sweden, on research on Women in the Kibbutz, 1975.
• Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Research Grant, for research on sexuality and psychological androgyny, 1976-1980.
• Mensa Education & Research Foundation Award for Excellence in Research for research on and exposé of gender differences on intelligence tests in Israel, 1986.
• Elected a Member of the New York Academy of Science, 1987.   
• Distinguished Leadership Citation for her contributions to the Psychology of Women nationally and internationally, APA’s Committee on Women and Psychology, 1992. 
• Prize for Outstanding Research, Israel Society for the Study and Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 1992.
• Elected full member of the International Academy for Sex Research, 1994. 
• Fellow, Salzburg Seminar: Women’s Global Leadership – Stories from Success, 1997.
• First Recipient of the Florence Denmark and Gori Gunvald Award for Research on Women and Gender, International Council of Psychologists, 2002.
• Outstanding Researcher Award: Bridging the Gap between Academia and Community, Haifa Municipality, 2003.
• First recipient of American Psychological Association’s Division for International Psychology Distinguished Visiting Professorship, 2005-2006.
• Distinguished Citizen Award, Haifa Municipality, 2008. 
• Outstanding Member of ITA (Israel Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), in Recognition for the establishment of and contributions to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Israel, 2014.

With Palgi, M., Blasi, J., and M. Rosner, Eds. Sexual Equality: The Israeli The Kibbutz Tests the Theories. Philadelphia: Norwood Press, 1983.

With Mednick, M.S., Izraeli, D.N. & Bernard, J., Eds. Women's Worlds: From The New Scholarship. New York: Praeger Publications, 1985

With Swirski, B., Eds. Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel. London: Pergamon Press, 1991. 

With Hoch, Z. “Couple interactional classification of sexual dysfunctions.” Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 6, No. 2 (1980): 129-134.

With Perry, M., Hoch, Z., & Shepher, J.. “Personality adjustment and sexual adequacy.” In International Research in Sexology., edited by H. Lief and Z. Hoch, 81-84. New York: Praeger Publications, 1984.

With Fragen, K. “Women's Studies in Israel: Battling the Myths.: Canadian Women's Studies Journal 6 (1985): 50-52.

Safir, M.P. (1986). “The Effects of nature or nurture effects on sex differences in intellectual function: Israeli  findings.” Sex  Roles 14,  Nos. 11/12 (1986):  581-590. 

With Rabin, C., Margolin, G., & Tabovic, S. “The Areas of Change Questionnaire: A cross-cultural comparison of Israeli and American distressed and non-distressed couples.” American Journal of Family Therapy 14 (1986): 324-335.

“The Status of Women in Israel.” The Link (Le Trait D'Union) 132 (1989): 33-39. 

“Reducing Sex Differences in University Entrance Examinations.” In Gender and Science and Technology - vol. 2 . Haifa: The Technion, 1989.

With Ben Tzvi-Meyer, S. ,Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. & Kuppermintz, H. “Prominence of Girls and Boys in the Classroom: School Children's' Perception.” Sex Roles 27 (1992): 439-453.

With Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Ben Tzvi-Meyer, S., (1993) “Boys and girls ratings as prominent  pupils in the eyes of their classroom peers.”  Psychology 3 (1993): 153-165. [ Hebrew]

With Nevo, J. and Swirski, B. “The interface between women's studies and feminism in Israel.” Women's Studies Quarterly 3&4 (1994): 116-131.

With Barak, A. “Sex and the Internet - An Israeli Perspective.” Journal of  Sex Education and Therapy 22 (1997):.67-73.

"’Remembrance of Things Past’: The Reconstruction of Transsexuals’ Autobiographical Memories.” In Recollections of Trauma: Scientific Evidence and Clinical Practice, edited by J.D. Read and D.S. Lindsay, 584. New York: Plenium Press, 1997

“An Israeli Sex Therapist Considers an New View of Women’s Sexual Problems.” Journal of Women in Psychotherapy, 24 (2001).

“Women’s Studies in Israel.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jerusalem: Shalvi Publishing Ltd, 2006.

With Flaisher-Kellner, S., & Rosenmann, A. “When gender differences surpass cultural differences in personal satisfaction with body shape in Israeli college students.” Sex Roles 52 (2005): 369-378.