Catherine Hakim (born 30 May 1948) is a British sociologist who specialises in women's employment and women's issues.
Her development and publishment of the "preference theory" and "sex-deficit theory" has groundbreaking implications on modern women's empowerment issues.
She is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute 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.