Ann Rosamund Oakley (b.1944,) née Titmuss, is an English sociologist, writer, and feminist. Known as the “mother of contemporary feminists,” she was one of the leading figures in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s.
Born in London and educated at Somerville College, Oxford, Oakley has been a sociology and social policy professor since 2005 at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she established the Social Science Research Unit.
Oakley’s work focuses mostly on gender roles. Her best-known work is The Men’s Room (1988,) made into a 1991 BBC2 television drama miniseries starring Harriet Walter, Amanda Redman, and Bill Nighy (his breakthrough role.)
Oakley’s works include Sex, Gender and Society (1972,) The Sociology of Housework (1974,) Gender on Planet Earth (2002,) and Welfare and Wellbeing: Richard Titmuss’ Contribution to Social Policy (2002.) She co-wrote with psychoanalyst and feminist Juliet Mitchell The Rights and Wrongs of Women (1976) and What is Feminism? (1986.)
Oakley’s memoir is Taking It Like a Woman (1984.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ann Oakley
Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.
—Ann Oakley
Topics: Housework
There are always women who will take men on their own terms. If I were a man I wouldn’t bother to change while there are women like that around.
—Ann Oakley
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women
Men are the enemies of women. Promising sublime intimacy, unequalled passion, amazing security and grace, they nevertheless exploit and injure in a myriad subtle ways. Without men the world would be a better place: softer, kinder, more loving; calmer, quieter, more humane.
—Ann Oakley
Topics: Men
Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
—Ann Oakley
Topics: Family
If love means that one person absorbs the other, then no real relationship exists any more. Love evaporates; there is nothing left to love. The integrity of self is gone.
—Ann Oakley
Topics: Love
The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values. Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.
—Ann Oakley
Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.
—Ann Oakley
Topics: Mothers
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