Ben Waber reviewed Getting Me Cheap by Lisa Dodson
An Incisive Deep Dive Into the Intersection of Low-Wage Work and Gender
5 stars
This book provides an incisive, painful dive into how low-wage work locks women in poverty starting from when they are children. By combining rich interviews and discussion groups with macro perspective from other researchers, Freeman and Dodson lay out in devastating detail the different systems and classes of work that construct a nearly insurmountable web that binds low income women into extremely precarious lives, and the profound cruelty of our political "solutions" to these problems. Companies and individuals that exploit this labor, relying on public subsidies in the form of benefits paid to their employees necessary for them to survive on the below-subsistence compensation they receive from employers, come out looking awful. Overall this book presents an irrefutable case for action at political and corporate level to drive real, positive, systemic change to finally break down these constraints. Highly recommend
This book provides an incisive, painful dive into how low-wage work locks women in poverty starting from when they are children. By combining rich interviews and discussion groups with macro perspective from other researchers, Freeman and Dodson lay out in devastating detail the different systems and classes of work that construct a nearly insurmountable web that binds low income women into extremely precarious lives, and the profound cruelty of our political "solutions" to these problems. Companies and individuals that exploit this labor, relying on public subsidies in the form of benefits paid to their employees necessary for them to survive on the below-subsistence compensation they receive from employers, come out looking awful. Overall this book presents an irrefutable case for action at political and corporate level to drive real, positive, systemic change to finally break down these constraints. Highly recommend