Getting By on the Minimum - Softcover

Johnson, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041592801X ISBN 13: 9780415928014

Publisher: Routledge, 2002

Synopsis

First published in 2002. Jennifer Johnson profiles the real-life stories of more than sixty women who have no college education, are married with kids, and earn an average of $16,000 per year, giving us an important window into a large, poorly understood segment of our society. Through the words of these women, Johnson captures the essence of women's working-class experience: from job stagnation, low self-esteem, and social isolation to camaraderie among coworkers, loyalty to one's roots, and even pride in a job well done. This compassionately told book offers a captivating and emotional study of the difference class makes in women's lives, as well as the problems, restrictions, and rewards common to all women.

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer Johnson is a Research Scientist in the Department of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She is the Co-Principal Investigator of a two-year research project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Reviews

For this Nickeled and Dimed line field report, Johns Hopkins' researcher Johnson spoke to 60 white, married, Baltimore-area mothers between the ages of 35 and 52 who work in settings ranging from convenience stores and customer service centers to hospitals and beauty parlors. In general, her working-class interviewees married young, never received adequate education or career guidance, struggled to raise their children and were striving for a second chance at finding more rewarding, lucrative work. Even as these women work toward goals such as GEDs or professional training, they continue to view what many would consider to be attainable careers, such as nursing or teaching, as beyond their reach. While Johnson provides plenty of statistics and cites a wide range of secondary sources, she wisely gives her interviewees ample space to tell their own stories, and their narratives inject the book with vivid realism. They discuss not only the challenges and rewards of working life but also such family issues as children struggling with substance abuse, aging parents grown mentally or physically ill and grandchildren in need of care and attention. As Johnson addresses the influence of their upbringings on these women's adult lives, the link between employment and their self-esteem, and related topics, she largely avoids editorializing and lets the facts speak for themselves, and her writing is compassionate without being heavy-handed. As a non-first-person-based complement to Ehrenreich's book, this study could be recommended to anyone interested in class and gender.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Johnson (sociology, Johns Hopkins Univ.) here provides a view into the lives of working-class women by presenting the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of 63 women who participated in a work-satisfaction study. Of more significance, she also explores class distinctions among women by including 18 middle- to upper-middle-class women for comparison. Johnson encouraged her subjects to give full voice to their thoughts, and the result is an honest glimpse into their lives. The book follows a style similar to Studs Terkel's Working and Lillian Rubin's Worlds of Pain in that the actual words of the interviewees are used, giving the reader the impression of being directly spoken to. But Johnson's study is especially meaningful because she acknowledges the class distinction among working women and increases readers' awareness of these differences, as well as of all the workplace inequities women face. More in depth and insightful than Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, the book successfully lays out the complex array of reasons some women work at lower-paying jobs, from their perspective. Well documented and containing an extensive bibliography, this should be required reading for certain sociology and women's studies courses and is recommended for all academic and large public libraries.
Sandra Isaacson, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Las Vegas
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041592801X
• ISBN 13: 9780415928014
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278