Ogasawara, a Japanese sociologist trained in the United States, skillfully mines perceptive participant-observation analyses and numerous interviews to outline the tensions and humiliations of OL work. She details the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that OLs who are frustrated by demeaning, dead-end jobs thwart their managers and subvert the power structure to their advantage. Using gossip, outright work refusal, and public gift-giving as manipulative strategies, they can ultimately make or break the careers of the men. This intimate and absorbing analysis illustrates how the relationships between women and work, and women and men, are far more complex than the previous literature has shown.

"Ogasawara treats women office workers not only as oppressed but as active players who express their dissatisfaction in highly nuanced public ways, engaging the hierarchies to their ends, manipulating the dependencies of their male coworkers, and turning subordination on its head. Along the way, and turning subordination on its head. Along the way, she slashes and burns a lot of old chestnut stereotypes about men, women, and work in Japan. A wonderful book". -- MerryWhite, author of The Material Child