Ann Oakley is a leading British sociologist and writer. She is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she set up the Social Science Research Unit and the EPPI-Centre, an enterprise devoted to making social research useful to policy-makers. She is the author of many books. Her non-fiction includes The Sociology of Housework (1974), Becoming A Mother (1979), Experiments in Knowing (2000) and Gender on Planet Earth (2002). Among her novels are A Proper Holiday (1996), Overheads (1999), and The Men's Room (1988), which was made into a BBC TV series.