As a historian, Penina Migdal Glazer has shed new light on the struggles of women to gain acceptance even in eras of supposedly greater opportunity. Glazer graduated from Douglass College in 1960 and earned a PhD in History from Rutgers University in 1970, the year she joined the faculty of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She served as dean of the faculty from 1976–1984 and became vice president of the college in 1989. In her 1986 book Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Women into the Professions 1890–1940, Glazer showed the ways in which early women professionals fought to advance in their careers and balance work and family, often unsuccessfully. She also co-wrote a number of other books, including two with her husband, Myron Peretz Glazer: The Environmental Crusaders: Confronting Disaster, Mobilizing Community in 1998 and The Jews of Paradise: Creating a Vibrant Community in Northampton, Massachusetts in 2004. As part of her commitment to women’s history and Jewish history, Penina Glazer has served on the boards of the National Yiddish Book Center and the Everywoman’s Center, and was a founding board member of the Jewish Women’s Archive.