Nickel And Dimed Summary

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The book Nickel and Dimed, and ethnographic report, describes how the American women working low-wages job get by every day. In this book, Ehrenreich denounce that employment opportunities are not equal among lower class citizen and wealthier individuals, and the salaries most of the times are not sufficient to cover the necessities families have. During Ehrenreich’s ethnographic work in Key West, Maine, and Minnesota she first encountered the impact of segregation and employment opportunities, while she was trying to live in five hundred dollars rent she finds out that employment opportunities are far from her house. This finding revealed the relations between housing segregation and employment discrimination, which limits the efforts of …show more content…

This apply not only to maids, but also to those individuals working in different sectors where they may not look as clean and worth as those working white collar jobs. In many cases, this limit employment opportunities. During this time, Ehrenreich developed a rash because of a chemical reaction, she was able to seek medical help in contrast to those women who did not have health insurance or could not afford medical help. As result she concludes that medical services lack of affordability and low-wages working families cannot access medical helps, because medical services were only offered during working hours any people in poverty cannot afford or are not allowed to miss …show more content…

Her personal experience restricted her at some points to clearly see the reality of the women working as maids. For example, she unintentionally offended the other women when she assumed that everyone can pass the test to work at Mary maids. In my opinion, this was somewhat unethical. Furthermore, she became somewhat frustrated as “better and higher paying jobs were available” -however they did not make an attempt to switch; later on, she gained knowledge that not everyone has the same mobility, or is able to switch employments and wait two weeks to receive a paycheck as many of them live paycheck to paycheck and pay weekly rents or hotels. She also discovered who corporations (like Walmart) develop strategies of oppression. One example of this practices was during the interview at Walmart when the interviewer says: “WE don’t just want your muscles” (Ehrenreich, p. 59), the “we” makes an emphasis on the power a large corporation may have on its

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