Close Quarters : A Woman’s Guide to Living and Working in Masculine Environments

This unconventional and refreshingly candid book offers delightful and gritty advice to women working and living in masculine environments. The author’s first-hand experiences can help women work more smoothly, happily, and successfully in any profession where men and women are in close quarters, such as law enforcement, firefighting, any aspect of the maritime industry, construction, forestry, and the military. Written frankly, it covers everything from avoiding embarrassing male colleagues with one’s laundry, to graciously deflecting their romantic advances. This book challenges the politically correct, hair-trigger sensitivities some women hold regarding sexual harassment and discrimination. It gives new-found respect to women who have endured sometimes brutal harassment inorder to blaze trails into male-dominated professions. It applauds the merits of being a “lady,” not just a woman, no matter what the setting. The book is sobering, laugh-out-loud funny, and thought-provoking.By Captain Tuuli Messer-BookmanCaptain Tuuli Messer-Bookman has worked on commercial cargo ships, usually as the only woman aboard. A graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, she earned a law degree at the University of San Francisco and is a tenured professor in the Marine Transportation Department of the California Maritime Academy in California. She and her husband live in Benicia, California.23 line drawingsA Woman’s Guide to Living and Working in Masculine Environments23 line drawings