Ann Oakley is a British sociologist, feminist and writer who pioneered research into women’s lives, including the role of a housewife, childbirth and motherhood. She is currently a Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London where she founded the Social Science Research Unit and established the EPPI-Centre (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and co-ordinating Centre).
Oakley was born in 1944 in London to Richard Titmuss, a leading figure in social policy research at LSE and Kathleen Titmouse, a social worker. Oakley attended Haberdashers’ Aske’s school and Chiswick Polytechnic before continuing her education at Somerville College, Oxford University where she read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). In 1964, she married fellow academic Robin Oakley and for the next few years she worked in social research and wrote scripts for children’s television as well as numerous short stories and two novels, both of which were rejected by publishers. Oakley then returned to education, and in 1969 she gained her Ph.D from Bedford College. Her Ph.D studies had been on women’s attitudes to housework.
Oakley began to pioneer research into women’s lives and in 1972, published Sex, Gender and Society which introduced the term ‘gender’ into social science, and subsequently into general use. The work is now established as a classic in the field, and set out to answer the question “What are the differences between the sexes?” Oakley states that gender roles are learnt from birth, when the “male baby who has an erection while being weighed is referred to jokingly as ‘a dirty little man’: the female baby born with curly hair is told she is pretty” and language continues to establish these roles with statements like “you’re a naughty boy. “that’s a good girl”. Then children were praised for choosing “sex-correct” toys with one mother reminding her son “Dolls are for girls, not for boys. Everybody will think you’re a sissy”. Oakley presents the fact that “‘Sex’ is a word that refers to the biological differences between male and female: the visible difference in genitalia, the related difference in procreative function. ‘Gender’ however is a matter of culture: it refers to the social classification into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’.”
In 1974 she published Housewife, which contained an analysis of women’s unpaid work in the home written from a feminist perspective. It aimed to challenge the idea that work is a masculine activity and women are conventionally assumed to take up the role of wife, mother and housekeeper. Oakley presented the historical development of the role of a housewife, and explores how the position has changed and been influenced by industrialization. That same year, Oakley published The Sociology of Housework in which she interviewed a number of women and found that 70% were dissatisfied with their role as housewife, and would on average work 77 hours a week. She did find that women were pleased with one aspect of their role – the fact that they were able to “have your own time – there’s nobody behind you with a punch card. You’re your own boss” although Oakley herself states that this autonomy is theoretical rather than real as the work had to be done or else there would be consequences. Oakley attempt to categorise housework as work, instead of just a role assigned to married women and presents it as exploitative, alienating and sexist to assume that women should carry out these tasks without either recognition, monetary compensation or help from male members of the family. On the whole, Oakley found that women who had previously had jobs – especially those of high status – outside the home previous to their marriage were dissatisfied with housework, especially with the low status, monotony, loneliness and long hours that they were forced to keep.
In 1979, after turning her attention to the role of motherhood, Oakley published Becoming a Mother (later renamed to From Here to Maternity) following a study funded by the Social Science Research Council into women’s experiences having their first babies. She interviewed women from their visits to the antenatal clinic right through to five months after their babies were born and explored areas like caring for the baby, environment, domestic environment, employment and returning to work and the idea of postnatal depression and whether or not they felt they had experienced it. She followed this a year later with Women Confined: Towards a Sociology of Childbirth which was more analytical and looked at models of postnatal depression and comparing them to the interview data she had collected to see if the models were effective – they were not.
In 1979, Oakley joined the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in Oxford, where she worked on the history of antenatal care The Captured Womb (1984) and on social support for childbearing women Social Support and Motherhood (1992). In 1985, Oakley took a position as Deputy Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education in London and give years later became the founder and Director of the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU). Oakley had been a major promoter of evidence-based public policy research at the SSRU and established the EPPI-Centre (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and co-ordinating Centre) in 1993 to work on systematic reviews of policy-relevant research. Oakley’s interest in combining methodological approaches, including qualitative data and randomised controlled experiments led to Experiments in Knowing: Gender and method in the social sciences (2000). She also continued to pursue her interest in gender divisions and their impact on the behaviour of men and women and on the environment and in 2002 published Gender on Planet Earth. In 2005, she retired from her position as Director of the SSRU to focus on her writing.
In addition to her research, Oakley has also written several best-selling novels, one of which, The Men’s Room was later adapted into a miniseries for the BBC in 1991. Oakley is currently Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Institute of Education, University of London. She holds honorary appointments as a Professor in Social Sciences at the Institute of Child Health in London and as a Fellow at Somerville College in Oxford. In 2011 she was awarded with one of the first Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British Sociological Association for her contribution to the history of the development of sociology in Britain. She spends more of her time writing, and continues to conduct research on a part-time basis.