British sociologist

Catherine Hakim (born 30 May 1948) (Arabic: كاترين حكيم) is a British sociologist who specialises in women's employment and women's issues. She is known for developing the preference theory, for her work on erotic capital and more recently for a sex-deficit theory. She is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at the Ins*ute for the Study of Civil Society (Civitas), and has formerly worked in British central government and been a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics and the Centre for Policy Studies. She has also been a Visiting Professor at the Social Science Research Center Berlin.

Contents

• 1 Background
• 2 Career and work
  • 2.1 The idea of erotic capital
    • 2.1.1 Catherine Hakim's perspective
    • 2.1.2 Contradictions
• 3 Sex deficit
• 4 Publications
  • 4.1 Selected books
  • 4.2 Selected articles
• 5 References
• 6 External links

Background

Born in Beirut, Hakim grew up in the Middle East and moved to the United Kingdom for boarding school at age 16, around 1964. She earned a B.A. at the University of Sussex in 1969 and a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Essex in 1974. She worked in Caracas, Venezuela 1969–1972 and as a research officer with the Tavistock Ins*ute in London 1972–1974. She was a senior research officer with the British Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (now the Office of National Statistics) 1974–1978, and a principal research officer with the Department of Employment 1978–1989. She was professor of sociology at the University of Essex and director of the ESRC Data Archive 1989–1990. She was affiliated with the London School of Economics:between 1993 and 2011; she became a Morris Ginsberg fellow in 1993 and was employed as a senior research fellow in the sociology department until 2003. From 2003 to 2011 she was affiliated with the LSE in a visiting capacity; she maintained an office at the ins*ution and was listed as a senior research fellow in the sociology department at the LSE website until 2011, when the arrangement came to an end amid public discussion of her book Honey Money. Since 2011 she has been a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and the Ins*ute for the Study of Civil Society (Civitas), and a Visiting Professor at the Social Science Research Center Berlin.

Career and work

Hakim 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 theory and her criticism of many feminist *umptions about women's employment. Her most recent books develop a 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.

Hakim is a member of the editorial board of the European Sociological Review and a former member of the editorial board of International Sociology.

The idea of erotic capital

Catherine Hakim's perspective

Catherine Hakim states that erotic capital is an *et in many social and economic settings such as media and politics. This theory added erotic as an additional form of capital to Pierre Bourdieu's concept of society being run by four main types of capita - cultural, social, symbolic, and economic. Hakim defined erotic capital as the concept that an individual's beauty, sexual attractiveness, enhanced social interaction, liveliness, social presentation, sexuality, and fertility can provide opportunities to advance in life. According to Hakim, the most important and most controversial of these seven components would be sexual attractiveness, as her studies indicated that family men tend to crave sex more than women, a phenomenon she named the male sex deficit. She encouraged young women to use this *et to earn a more respectable position in society. Hakim believes that erotic capital has gone unacknowledged for far too long and that the patriarchal society and moral constraints of conservative communities have caused the idea of beauty and attractiveness to stress the importance of personality, not giving enough credit to physique. She doesn't encourage a society based on solely erotic capital but rather states that it plays a subconscious role in daily life decisions, such as career offerings, enrichment opportunities, and social networking. For example, she places current dating apps and social media on the spotlight, stating that the internet has created somewhat of a digitized version of dating and that these markets will gain traction as time goes on. She strongly believes that these sites and the decision of marriage are driven by a woman's erotic capital and a man's economic capital.

Contradictions

Many groups such as feminists have actively rejected the idea of erotic capital by stating that the sex positive movement highlights the rights of women in only a manner that highlights advantages and ignores contradictory research that has shown that attractive women are less likely to receive a promotion. Bourdieu's followers have *erted that he had developed the idea of 'body capital' long ago but refused to include in his general capita because it was too intertwined with economic capital. For example, if a woman from a high socioeconomic status could buy beauty products and afford body shaping surgeries, she would be able to change her body capital.

Sex deficit

Further information: Desire discrepancy

In 2017, Hakim was accused of misogyny after publishing an article which critics claim suggested women are to blame for sexual *ault. The article bases its argument on a research paper published in 2015 which evaluated 30 sex surveys globally and claimed that, since the 1960s sexual revolution, women's sexual motivation and interest in the developed world has decreased, causing what Hakim calls a "male sexual deficit". This, it is argued, can help explain why sexual har*ment, sexual violence, rape, rising demand for commercial sexual services and other behaviours are almost exclusively male. She has argued that the sex deficit also derives from men naturally having a higher sex drive than women.

Publications

Selected books

• Secondary *ysis in social research, London:: Allen & Unwin, 1982, ISBN:0-04-312015-6, ISBN:0-04-312016-4
• Social Change and Innovation in the Labour Market: Evidence from the Census SARs on Occupational Segregation and Labour Mobility, Part-Time Work and Student Jobs, Homework and Self-Employment (Oxford University Press, 1998). ISBN:0-19-829381-X
• Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory (Oxford University Press, 2000). With a Preface by Anthony Giddens. ISBN:0-19-924210-0
• Research Design: Successful Designs for Social and Economic Research (Routledge, 2000). ISBN:978-0-415-22312-6
• Models of the Family in Modern Societies: Ideals and Realities (Ashgate, 2003). ISBN:0-7546-4406-5
• Key Issues in Women's Work (Gl*house Press, 1996, 2004). ISBN:1-904385-16-8
• Modelos de Familia en las Sociedades Modernas: Ideales y Realidades (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2005). ISBN:978-84-7476-378-2
• Little Britons: Financing Childcare Choice (Policy Exchange, 2008), with Karen Bradley, Emily Price and Louisa Mitchell. ISBN:978-1-906097-21-9
• Honey money: why attractiveness is the key to success. London: Penguin. 2012. ISBN:9780241952214.

Selected articles

• Hakim, Catherine (March 1998). "Developing a sociology for the twenty-first century: Preference Theory". British Journal of Sociology. 49 (1): 137–143. doi:10.2307/591267. JSTOR:591267.
• Hakim, Catherine (2004). "A new approach to explaining fertility patterns: Preference Theory". Population and Development Review. 29 (3): 349–374. CiteSeerX:10.1.1.467.811. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2003.00349.x. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012.
• Hakim, Catherine (August 2006). "Women, careers, and work-life preferences". British Journal of Guidance and Counselling. 34 (3): 279–294. CiteSeerX:10.1.1.463.726. doi:10.1080/03069880600769118. S2CID:13388770. Pdf.
• Hakim, Catherine (September 2003). "Public morality versus personal choice: the failure of social at*ude surveys". British Journal of Sociology. 54 (3): 339–345. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4446.2003.00339.x. PMID:14514462.
• Hakim, Catherine (November 2002). "Lifestyle preferences as determinants of women's differentiated labor market careers". Work and Occupations. 29 (4): 428–459. doi:10.1177/0730888402029004003. S2CID:153914313.
• Hakim, Catherine (2007). "The politics of female diversity in the 21st century". In Browne, Jude (ed.). The future of gender. Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press. pp.:191–227. ISBN:9780511619205.
• Hakim, Catherine (2005). "Sex differences in work-life balance goals". In Houston, Diane (ed.). Work-life balance in the 21st century. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp.:55–79. ISBN:9781403920621.
• Hakim, Catherine (2004). "Lifestyle preferences versus patriarchal values: causal and non-causal at*udes". In Zollinger Giele, Janet; Holst, Elke (eds.). Changing life patterns in Western industrial societies. Amsterdam Boston: Elsevier/JAI. pp.:69–91. ISBN:9780762310203.
• Hakim, Catherine (October 2010). "Erotic capital". European Sociological Review. 26 (5): 499–518. doi:10.1093/esr/jcq014.
• Hakim, Catherine (2011). "Women's lifestyle preferences in the 21st century: Implications for family policy". In Beets, Gijs; Schippers, Joop; te Velde, Egbert R. (eds.). The future of motherhood in western societies: late fertility and its consequences. Dordrecht, Netherlands New York: Springer. pp.:177–196. ISBN:9789048189694.

References

External links

• Official website