Data from in-depth interviews with more than one hundred women over a three-year period suggest that the experience of women in skilled and semiskilled jobs contradicts the conventional wisdom about the values and motives of these women and challenge many sociological findings regarding the alienating character of much blue collar work. The women reported high levels of job satisfaction, defined their work as interesting and challenging, and noted increasing levels of self-assessed competence and self-confidence as a result of their work experience. Also noteworthy in the findings is the absence of references to such things as convenience, ability to combine employment with marriage and child rearing, sociability at the workplace, limited expectations of the worker and similar factors typically regarded as "important to women's occupational choices." Implications of the data are that paid employment may constitute the work sphere in which increasing numbers of women will seek opportunities for challenging work and a sense of personal power; employment in any type of skilled or semiskilled job may be viewed as better than no employment or employment in the traditional areas of women's work which are increasingly diminished and trivialized in urban-industrial societies. (KC)