Kathleen Gough was born on 16 August 1925 in Hunsingore, a village near Wetherby in Yorkshire, England, that then had a population of 100, no electricity and no piped water.
Her father, Albert, was a blacksmith who became involved in the introduction of agricultural machinery to the area and has been described by David Price as being a "working-class radical".
Gough initially was supervised by J. H. Hutton, whose work on caste in India was informed by early twentieth-century anthropological concerns about the origins of social institutions.
She contributed over half of the content published as Matrilineal Kinship in 1961, of which Heike Moser and Paul Younger say that "Her analysis is a brilliant example of the structural-functionalist anthropology associated with Britain in her day, and everyone since has begun from her explanations or matriliny of marumukatayam as descent through the female line....
Gough also taught and conducted research at Harvard, Manchester, Berkeley, University of Michigan, Wayne State, Toronto, and British Columbia.
[8] Moreover, Gough's membership in the Johnson-Forest Tendency and her work for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam triggered the interest of the FBI, who placed her and her husband on their watchlist.
[7] Gough promoted the welfare of lower castes in India, hoping to bring them closer to the principles of Communism.