Careers For Women Summary
Scott, Joanna

Careers For Women Overview

Joanna Scott’s historical fiction, Careers for Women, details the lives of three women who work in the public relations department of the Port Authority in New York starting in the 1950s. Through these women and their interwoven stories, Scott crafts a story that is not dictated by a fluid timeline, but rather by a chain of events and character associations that guides the reader back and forth from the past to the future. Careers for Women manipulates time and weaves narratives together to discuss what women had to conquer between the 1950s and the 1980s, a boom in architectural innovation, and the harmful consequences that made those innovations possible. Through a complex layering of office gossip, serious mystery, and boundless friendships, Scott’s novel explores themes of performance, jealousy, greed, appearances, and power.