Customer Reviews

Lesbian Lifestyles: Women's Work and the Politics of Sexuality

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This is the book that I've been waiting for. If you have an interest in the history of lesbians or in women and work, this will be a useful addition to your library. However, if you are exploring lesbians' participation in work, as I am, this is a must. I have been able to find no other rigourously researched study of this kind.

Dunne's work specifically explicates the relations of sexuality, not only gender, as they intersect with work. The effect is to illuminate the experiences of work that may rise directly from being a lesbian. This, finally, gives an added dimension to years of research into women and work.

Dunne's study combines a qualitative approach with empirical data collection. Quotations from many of the research participates are interspersed liberally with discussion, historical information, and related theoretical arguments.

Her analysis of the sociology of lesbians and work is helpful not only in explicating the complex social relations, but also as a continuation of the project of building documents of lesbians' social history. For example, Dunne uses a constructionist framework of sexuality built from Foucault's work but continues the feminist critique of that work by using prominant women social historians such as Faderman to elaborate on specifically lesbian-centred historical relations.

Lesbian Lifestyles creates even more than this useful study of the personal lives of lesbians at work. From the standpoint of lesbians, it is also able to contribute to building the larger political project of theorizing the lives of women.