Available From UC Press

Moral Wages

The Emotional Dilemmas of Victim Advocacy and Counseling

Kenneth H. Kolb

Moral Wages offers the reader a vivid depiction of what it is like to work inside an agency that assists victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Based on over a year of fieldwork by a man in a setting many presume to be hostile to men, this ethnographic account is unlike most research on the topic of violence against women. Instead of focusing on the victims or perpetrators of abuse, Moral Wages focuses exclusively on the service providers in the middle. It shows how victim advocates and counselors—who don't enjoy extrinsic benefits like pay, power, and prestige—are sustained by a different kind of compensation. As long as they can overcome a number of workplace dilemmas, they earn a special type of emotional reward reserved for those who help others in need: moral wages. As their struggles mount, though, it becomes clear that their jobs often put them in impossible situations—requiring them to aid and feel for vulnerable clients, yet giving them few and feeble tools to combat a persistent social problem.

Kenneth Kolb is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Furman University.

"Kolb has written a wonderful book that takes us inside agencies serving victims of sexual and domestic violence. With a clear-eyed yet empathetic perspective, he shows how advocates define and manage their identities in the face of ongoing, often conflicting pressures from clients, government bureaucracies, and their own principles and ideologies."
—Rose Corrigan, Drexel University

"In Moral Wages, Kenneth Kolb takes us into the world of domestic violence advocacy work, introducing us to voices of victim advocates. In the face of anemic state, local and federal resources these advocates work for “moral wages,” positive feelings not available in all lines of work. However, as Kolb documents, male allies benefit disproportionately from this symbolic reward system, thus providing us a cautionary tale highlighting the gendered dimensions of emotion work, even in organizations designed to address gender inequality."
—C.J. Pascoe, author of Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

"Domestic violence shelters are staffed by dedicated women and men who perform gut-wrenching labor for few extrinsic rewards. So why do they do it? In this sensitive ethnography, Kenneth Kolb reveals that, more important to these workers than money and prestige are the symbolic rewards they receive. They get the right to believe they are good, virtuous, and moral beings. But these symbolic rewards are doled out unequally on the basis of gender. Kolb finds that men have to do less work than women do to receive their moral wages, revealing men’s advantages even in the predominately female world of compassionate labor."
—Christine Williams, University of Texas at Austin

"The research is very well done and yields many interesting findings, unlike anything else that is out there. It will be very good in the classroom, and it should have wide appeal for practitioners as well. There is a great deal of new information and new ideas in this study, and a book written from the perspective of a male advocate is a welcome addition to the field."
—Jennifer Dunn, Texas Tech University

232 pp.6 x 9

9780520282728$29.95|£25.00Paper

Jul 2014