Kathryn Frederick Clarenbach earned her academic degrees in political science from the University of Wisconsin (B.A., 1941, M.A. 1942, Ph.D. in 1946). After teaching in Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and New York, she returned to Madison. The early 1960's saw the beginnings of the second wave of the modern American women's movement and in Madison, as elsewhere, homemakers sought to further their educations. To serve women such as these, in the spring of 1962 the University of Wisconsin chose Kathryn Clarenbach to establish a program of Continuing Education for Women–a program which launched her leadership in the women's movement in Wisconsin and the country.
In the following year, she was asked by Wisconsin's governor to convene a statewide Conference on the Status of Women and later to chair the resulting Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, which she did from 1964-1969 and again from 1970-1979. Because her University activities complemented her role on the Governor's Commission, in 1966 the University joined her office with Extension's Women's Educational Resources.
Kathryn Clarenbach represented Wisconsin at meetings of the National Association of Commissions on Women and served as its first president from 1970-1972.
After 1966 when the National Organization for Women was formed and Kathryn Clarenbach was elected to chair its national board, she forged the link between the emergent women's movement and traditional women's organizations.
Kathryn Clarenbach was a member of the United Faculty and Academic Staff (American Federation of Teachers Local 223).
Kathryn Clarenbach served as Executive Director of the U.S. Commission for the Observance of International Women's Year and as Deputy Coordinator of the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977, the largest and most important assembly of women and women's organizations. Under her leadership the conference mobilized a feminist coalition of unprecedented breadth and range.
