Professional Women at Work - by Jerry Jacobs (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book looks at the routine taken-for-granted features of work as experienced by professional women in bureaucratic environments. It shows why these trivial features are not trivial, but add up to a good part of what all work is composed of. Finally, it considers why the women interviewed in this study encountered and experienced their professional careers in the ways they did. There are many books on the general subject of women at work and the sociology of work, but few deal with what the work consists of, how it is accomplished, what one needs to know to undertake it competently, and how it is experienced by the worker. This book deals with all these issues, and more, that are typically overlooked in the literature on women at work in particular and on work in general.

Book Synopsis

This book looks at the routine taken-for-granted features of work as experienced by professional women in bureaucratic environments. It shows why these trivial features are not trivial, but add up to a good part of what all work is composed of. Finally, it considers why the women interviewed in this study encountered and experienced their professional careers in the ways they did. There are many books on the general subject of women at work and the sociology of work, but few deal with what the work consists of, how it is accomplished, what one needs to know to undertake it competently, and how it is experienced by the worker. This book deals with all these issues, and more, that are typically overlooked in the literature on women at work in particular and on work in general.

Review Quotes

"Jacobs offers Professional Women at Work as one way to increase the number of studies offering "rich description of work and the work experience.""-Social Forces 74: 2

?Jacob's study is a qualitative assessment of how routine, largely ignored aspects of work affect the work experience. This monograph provides a convincing argument for the need for qualitative analyses of the taken-for-granted characteristics of work. Advanced undergraduate; graduate.?-Choice

?Jacobs offers Professional Women at Work as one way to increase the number of studies offering "rich description of work and the work experience."?-Social Forces 74: 2

"Jacob's study is a qualitative assessment of how routine, largely ignored aspects of work affect the work experience. This monograph provides a convincing argument for the need for qualitative analyses of the taken-for-granted characteristics of work. Advanced undergraduate; graduate."-Choice

About the Author

JERRY JACOBS is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Syracuse University and author of 13 books, including Fun City (1974, 1978, 1983), The Moral Justification of Suicide (1982), and The Mall: An Attempted Escape from Everyday Life (1984).