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Biography of Barbara Adam WoottonName: Barbara Adam WoottonBirth Date: 1897 Death Date: 1988 Place of Birth: Cambridge, England Nationality: English Gender: Female Occupations: social scientist, economist, educator Barbara Adam Wootton The English social scientist Barbara Adam Wootton (1897-1988) began as an economist, progressing to a student of social policy and in particular the problems of welfare and social deviance. She was among the first "Life Peers" in Parliament and the first woman to chair that assembly by sitting on the Woolsack.Barbara Wootton died in the summer of 1988 in her 92nd year. She was born in 1897 into an academic family in Cambridge, the daughter of James Adam, a classical scholar and senior tutor of Emmanuel College. Her mother taught at Girton, the college founded for women who were, until the 1920s, excluded from full membership of the university. Mrs. Adam taught her daughter at home until she was nearly 14, after which she went first to the Perse School in Cambridge and then to Girton. Her father died in 1907 when she was only 10 and the younger of her two brothers was killed …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…addition she was able to produce a continuous stream of books and pamphlets in which her scholarship as a social scientist was blended with a strong political commitment to liberty and a social justice predicated upon the notion of equality. Among sociologists she left little if any mark, but among the analysts of social policy, not least in the criminal justice field, her influence was considerable if not always immediately apparent. Further Reading Probably the most useful introduction to Wootton and her work is to be found in Philip Bean and David Whynes, editors, Barbara Wootton: Social Science and Public Policy (1968). Wootton's work, which addresses issues in social economics, planning, and criminal justice policy, is representative of the British tradition of social democratic thought in the period 1935 to 1970. Her autobiographical writing is a useful source of information for the period 1920-1970 in which she was active in academic and public life. |