Bücher von Ann Oakley

Throughout history, records of women's lives and work have been lost through the pervasive assumption of male dominance. Wives, especially, disappear as supporters of their husbands' work, as unpaid and often unacknowledged secretaries and research assistants, and as managers of men's domestic domains; even intellectual collaboration tends to be portrayed as normative wifely behaviour rather than as joint work. Forgotten Wives examines the ways in which the institution and status of marriage has contributed to the active 'disremembering' of women's achievements. Drawing on archives, biographies, autobiographies and historical accounts, best-selling author and academic Ann Oakley interrogates conventions of history and biography-writing using the case studies of four women married to well-known men - Charlotte Shaw, Mary Booth, Jeannette Tawney and Janet Beveridge. Asking critical questions about the mechanisms that maintain gender inequality, despite thriving feminist and other equal rights movements, she contributes a fresh vision of how the welfare state developed in the early 20th century.

Ann Oakley interviewed 60 women to find out what it's really like to have a baby. She discusses whether and why women want to become pregnant, how they imagine motherhood to be, the experience of birth, post-natal depression, feeding and caring routines and the challenges for the domestic division of labour and to fathers.

Ann Oakley analysed the perceptions of 40 urban housewives around 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. This classic book paved the way for the sociological study of many more aspects of women's lives.