Summary Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich explores the dynamics of social stratification by gender in working class America. Similarly to race, Ehrenreich shows how gender and gender roles are a part of a closed system in the American workforce. One can first see this early on in the book when Ehrenreich works as a waitress. Ehrenreich describes a dynamic in this work setting in which female workers are subservient to a dominant male manager who is very critical. She mainly shows this by introducing the reader to Joan,
“I especially like Joan, who turns out to be a militant feminist, pulling me aside one day to explain that ‘men run everything- we don’t have a chance unless we stick together.’ Accordingly, she backs me up when