ABSTRACT
This book will probably attract three main types of reader. One kind will consist of feminists, who are primarily interested in learning more about women’s lives, in this case about women’s opportunities-or lack of opportunities-for occupational achievement and movement between social classes. For this readership, the significance of the book will be its attempt to provide the first comprehensible description of female social mobility. A second, smaller audience will be those sociologists with a specialist knowledge of the sociology of social class and mobility. In a sense, they will be the reverse of the first audience, because their interest will be in mobility itself, here reported almost coincidentally about women. They will find, none the less, that conventional frameworks for mobility analysis are sharply tested when they are applied to female experiences. Our third readership will be drawn from the broader constituency of sociology and social science in general, with an equal curiosity about both women and social mobility. This group is likely to have less detailed background knowledge about these topics than the first two audiences do about one or the other subject.
