Ann Oakley

Ann Oakley studied at Somerville College, Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls and Bedford College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is belletristic literature, sociology and feminism. Employment is recorded with University of London and UCL Institute of Education. Works named in the authority record are The Men's Room.

• Name — Ann Rosamund Oakley • Birth Name — Ann Rosamund Titmuss • Born — 17 January 1944 • Occupation — Professor and Founder-Director of the Social Science Research Unit at University College London • Education — Somerville College, Oxford; Bedford College, University of London • Genre — Non-fiction Sociology and Fiction (novelist) • Subject — Sociology and Gender • Notable Works — The Men's Room (adapted for BBC television); The Sociology of Housework • Relatives — Professor Richard Titmuss (father) Ann Rosamund Oakley (née Titmuss; born 17 January 1944) is a British sociologist and writer. She is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, and founder-director of the Social Science Research Unit and the EPPI Centre at the Social Research Institute at University College London. She is also an Honorary Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.

Oakley is the only child of Professor Richard Titmuss and wrote a biography of her parents as well as editing some of his works for re-publication. Her mother Kathleen, née Miller, was a social worker. Ann Oakley was born in London in 1944. She was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, Chiswick Polytechnic and Somerville College, Oxford University taking her Bachelor of Arts in 1965, having married fellow future academic Robin Oakley the previous year. In the next few years Ann Oakley worked as a researcher and wrote fiction and scripts for children's television. Returning to formal education at Bedford College, University of London, she gained a PhD in 1974 with a thesis on women's attitudes to housework, from which several of her early books were derived. Much of her early sociological research focused on gender and women's health. In 1985, Oakley moved to work at the Institute of Education in London where she set up the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU) in 1990, and the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information Centre (EPPI Centre) in 1993. In the Spring of 1997, Oakley was a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden. Ann Oakley has written numerous academic works, of which the best known include Sex, Gender and Society (1972), Housewife (1974), The Sociology of Housework (1974), Becoming a Mother (1980), Experiments in Knowing (2000), Gender on Planet Earth (2002), and Women, Peace and Welfare (2019). She has also written a number of novels, of which the best known is The Men's Room, which was adapted by Laura Lamson for BBC television in 1991, and which starred Harriet Walter and Bill Nighy. She also wrote an early partial autobiography, Taking it Like a Woman (1984). Her biographical work includes a study of the life and work of the social scientist and life peer, Barbara Wootton, along with two books focusing on the lives of her parents. She has also made important contributions to debates about sociological research methods.

* • (published in America under title 'Women's Work') * * • (Penguin paperback edition published under title 'From Here to Maternity') * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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