Trying Work

This work analyzes the experiences of teenage girls and boys in their first working environments. Based on observations made in a Manpower Services Commission training workshop, it looks at the training and employment opportunities of the teenagers, at their home lives, their leisure time, their relationships and their sexuality. It describes how the boys learned to paint and decorate and do joinery work, while the girls learned how to operate knitting machines. Their reactions to each other and to work were very different - while the boys liked the workshop and were well-behaved, the girls rejected the work they were offered and were disruptive. This is a detailed and intimate sociological account of what it means to be young in today's society.