Gender and sexuality

Edited and selected by the author, this reader starts with work first published in the early 1970s. Ann Oakley's research and writing on sex and gender, housework, motherhood, women's health, and social science have influenced many inside and beyond social science, helping to shape the academic study of women and gender up to the present day.

This book explores the choices that we make about our sexuality and their effect our personal lives. It analyses how social policy informs and responds to such choices through an examination of normative assumptions about sexuality and its role in forming, regulating and constituting welfare subjects, discourses, theories, provisions and practices.

This new study uses longitudinal data to provide new insights into the changing dynamics of lives of women today. In particular, it explores the potential of longitudinal or life course analysis as a powerful tool for appreciating the gender dimension of social life.