Her father, James Adam (1860–1907) was a classicist and tutor at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

She studied Classics and Economics at Girton College, Cambridge from 1915 to 1919, winning the Agnata Butler Prize in 1917.

Wootton gained a first class in her final exams, but as a woman she was prevented from appending BA to her name.

[4] On leaving Cambridge Wootton moved to the London School of Economics to take up a research studentship.

From 1926 she was principal of Morley College for Working Men and Women in the Yorkshire clothier districts.

During the Second World War Wootton considered herself to be a conscientious objector, although she was never liable for military service.

She was created a life peer on 8 August 1958 with the title Baroness Wootton of Abinger, of Abinger Common in the County of Surrey,[10] on the advice of Harold Macmillan and was thereby one of the first women to sit in the House of Lords; she also became the first woman to sit on the Woolsack as a Deputy Speaker.

In 1960, she wrote an article for the New Statesman on women's social position in Britain, reviewing and commenting on Joan Barnes's pamphlet "A Woman's Place: Wider Horizons".

In nearly every sphere of public activity the sex which constitutes the majority of the population is now at least a visible minority.

She conceded that "[mathematical] equality of the sexes in public and professional life cannot, of course, be expected", but proposed that men and women share more domestic responsibilities: "Here then is where the next revolution is needed ... [in] all social classes the role of fathers ... no longer ends with wiping up.

"[12] This hope for (nearly) equal sharing of domestic labour is still unrealised in Britain nearly 60 years later.

Her anti-abortion views had no religious basis but led her to be removed from her position as vice-president of the British Humanist Association.

[14] Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview with Wootton as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews..[15] In it she recalls the influence of her mother, discusses Eva Hubback, who succeeded her at Morley College, and talks about her political career.

[7][18] In 1935, Wootton married George Wright, a colleague in adult education and London government.