Author Dr. Mary Gatta visits River Road Books on Thursday evening, for a discussion of the challenges faced by unemployed women in the current workforce system. Â
As a senior scholar at Washington, DC-based Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), and an adjunct professor at Rutgers University, Dr. Mary Gatta has been a go-to authority for some time on the challenges that women in the workforce face, in an age of downsizing, outsourcing, furloughing, income disparities and a Great Recession that doesn’t know when to quit. But it wasn’t until the academic went “undercover” as a client of a NJ One Stop Career Center, that she gained the first-hand perspective informing each page of All I Want Is a Job!: Unemployed Women Navigating the Public Workforce System, her new book from Stanford University Press.
On Thursday, May 1, the author visits River Road Books for a discussion and signing session centered around the book, a report that chronicles the struggle to navigate the often frustrating complexities of the public workforce system — and the ongoing struggle to survive — through interviews with unemployed women of all ages and backgrounds, along with the “street-level bureaucrats” who service them.
An academic with deep roots in eastern Monmouth County, the part-time resident of West Long Branch is the daughter of Maria Gatta, the first female mayor of Oceanport. Veteran Red Bankers might know her also as a niece of the late and legendary Ralph Gatta, longtime proprietor of Johnny’s Jazz Market on Shrewsbury Avenue.
Signing copies of All I Want is a Job can be reserved in advance of the 7 pm event, by calling (732)747-9455.
