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In All I Want Is a Job!, Mary Gatta puts a human face on workforce development policy. An ethnographic sociologist, Gatta went undercover, posing as a client in a New Jersey One-Stop Career Center. One-Stop Centers, developed as part of the federal Workforce Investment Act, are supposed to be an unemployed worker's go-to resource on the way to re-employment. But, how well do these centers function? With swarms of new clients coming through their doors, are they fit for the task of pairing America's workforce with new jobs?Weaving together her own account with interviews of jobless women and caseworkers, Gatta offers a revealing glimpse of the toll that unemployment takes and the realities of social policy. Women—both educated and unskilled—are particularly vulnerable in the current economy.



About the Author

Mary Gatta

Dr. Mary Gatta is a Senior Scholar at Wider Opportunities for Women in Washington DC. She manages and performs a wide variety of research related to job quality, such as workplace flexibility for low-wage workers in business sectors including restaurants, tourism and manufacturing; workforce development training programs and nontraditional job training for women; and the lived experiences of seniors who lack economic security. Mary's expertise includes the integration of a gender lens into these and other areas of economic policy analysis.

Before working at WOW, Mary was the Director of Gender and Workforce Policy at the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, Mary explored the experiences of women as they navigate One-Stop Career Centers, which led to Mary's new book, All I Want Is A Job! Unemployed Women Navigating the Public Workforce System, was released from Stanford University Press in April 2014. Mary is also the author of Not Just Getting By: The New Era of Flexible Workforce Development and Juggling Food and Feelings: Emotional Balance in the Workplace and is the editor of A US Skills System for the 21st Century: Innovations in Workforce Education and Development. Mary received a B.A. in social science from Providence College and her Master's degree and PhD in Sociology from Rutgers University, where she is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations.

Mary divides her time between Washington DC and the Jersey Shore!



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