Catherine Hakim

Catherine Hakim (born 30 May 1948) is a prominent British sociologist and expert on women's employment and women's issues. She has worked in British central government, and as a Senior Research Fellow in the London School of Economics. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. She has published extensively on labour market topics, women's employment, sex discrimination, social and family policy, as well as social statistics and research design. She has published over 100 articles in academic journals and edited collections, and over a dozen textbooks and research monographs. She is best known for developing preference theoryand her criticism of many feminist assumptions about women's employment. Her most recent books develop a new theory of "erotic capital". and its power in all social interaction, in the workplace, politics and in public life generally as well as in the invisible negotiations of private relationships.

She is a member of the editorial boards of the European Sociological Review and International Sociology.

She has been Principal Research Officer in the Department of Employment's Social Science Branch for ten years and Director of the ESRC Data Archive from 1989 to 1990. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics between 1990 and 2003, when she chose to resign from this position. However, she continued to be affiliated with the institution where she still had an office, and was listed both as a visiting scholar and as a senior research fellow at the institution's website until 2011.