★A ground-breaking and classic work by Ann Oakley, the pioneering British sociologist, and the British Sociological Association Lifetime achievement Awards winner!
★Sold for Chinese simplified rights!

In this ground-breaking book, acclaimed sociologist Ann Oakley undertook one of the first serious sociological studies to examine women’s work in the home. She interviewed 40 urban housewives and analysed their perceptions of housework, their feelings of monotony and fragmentation, the length of their working week, the importance of standards and routines, and their attitudes to different household tasks. Most women, irrespective of social class, were dissatisfied with housework – an important finding which contrasted with prevailing views. Importantly, too, she showed how the neglect of research on domestic work was linked to the inbuilt sexism of sociology. This classic book challenged the hitherto neglect of housework as a topic worthy of study and paved the way for the sociological study of many more aspects of women’s lives.

Ann Oakley is a writer of many academic publications and a social researcher for more than 50 years. She has written both novels and many non-fiction books. Most of her life has been spent working in university research. She is best known for her work on sex and gender, housework, childbirth and feminist social science. Her more recent interests have focused on evidence-based public policy and methodologies of research and evaluation, on the sociology of the body and on biography and autobiography as forms of life-writing.
She is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the UCL Institute of Education, and until January 2005 was Director of the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU) at the Institute, where she also headed the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre). She holds an honorary appointment as a Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.
Her books include The Sociology of Housework, From Here to Maternity and The Men's Room which was serialised by the BBC in 1991, Wives Women, Peace and Welfare, and most recently Forgotten and so on.
In 2011 the British Sociological Association gave her one of their first Lifetime achievement Awards for her extraordinary contribution to the history of the development of sociology in Britain.
Oakley is the only daughter of Professor Richard Titmuss, who's a pioneering British social researcher and teacher. He founded the academic discipline of social administration (now largely known in universities as social policy).