The major part of this book is based on a research study of women's attitudes to housework, and uses material obtained in a series of interviews with London housewives. The study was undertaken for a doctoral dissertation at the University of London.

When I first wrote up the research material in book form, it was part of a larger work on the position of women as housewives. This work acquired quite unwieldy proportions and consequently was split into two books. Chapters on the organization of work and family life in non-industrialized cultures, the historical evolution of the housewife role, the general situation of women in modern industrial society, and ideological aspects of women's domesticity, are now published in a separate volume (A. Oakley, Housewife, London: Allen Lane, 1974). Readers might like to consult this for background and contextual reading.

In a sense, I had in mind two audiences while writing The Sociology of Housework. One audience is composed of sociologists; the other of people who have a general interest in the housewife's situation, but no particular knowledge of sociology. For this latter group, I have tried to make the material as intelligible and as straightforward as possible. Nevertheless, non-sociological readers may find it easier to omit Chapters 1 and 2 (which deal with sexism in sociology and methodological aspects of the study respectively) and proceed straight to Chapter 3. A word should also be said about the relevance of the study to audiences outside Britain. Although the sample on which the research is based is a British one, the housewife's situation is not fundamentally different in other modern industrialized societies. Thus American readers, for example, will find themselves familiar with many aspects of the scene described in the following chapters. The discussion of the bias against women in sociology which occupies Chapter 1, but is thematic to the whole book, is, of course, not limited to any one country.

In carrying out the research and writing the book I have depended on help and advice from numerous sources. I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council, which provided financial aid in the form of a postgraduate studentship.