THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT in recent years has focused on bold firsts for women in every area, from West Point to the Little League to gubernatorial posts. But the spotlight always hits positions that have traditionally been filled by men. In Pink Collar Workers, Louise Kapp Howe points out that the spotlight has missed center stage: most women still hold jobs that have always been considered women's work.

In 1990, over one-third of the female labor force was employed in domestic service. In 1977, over one-third is employed in clerical work. Of all the secretaries in the United States, 99.1 per cent of all registered nurses were female. And if you pick up the phone to place a long distance call, there is a 93.3 per cent chance that the voice on the line will be that of a female.

Moreover, in any field in which women predominate the occasional man will often hold the jobs at the highest levels. The 9.5 per cent of all beauticians who are males are usually titled "hairstylists" and are employed in the most elegant salons. Almost 10 per cent of all jobs in the waiter-waitress category are filled by males, but the men can be found at Sardi's or Locke-Ober's, not at Howard Johnson's or the diner down the road.

In addition, the job structure within the individual place of business is often highly discriminatory. Men are the administrators, managers, and bartenders; women are the salesclerks and waitresses.

We've all heard statistics on unequal pay, unfair hiring practices, or the lack of job mobility for women. The feminist movement has undoubtedly scored some breakthroughs: here a judge, there an ambassador, here a policewoman.

But except in purely statistical terms, the realms in which women have traditionally worked have been largely unexplored. Waitresses, elementary schoolteachers and salesclerks do not publish columns in Newsweek or articles in Ms. They are not bringing lawsuits to the Supreme Court. The women in these areas are just not as visible as those who are breaking new ground.

In Pink Collar Workers, Howe has tried to fill this gap. While statistics set the stage for her argument, the bulk of the book is a series of interviews with women in five overwhelmingly female lines of work--beautician, sales workers, waitress, office worker and homemaker. In all but one case, Howe got her information by spending time in one establishment which served as a paradigm for the industry; in the one exception, she actually worked as a sales clerk in "Ladies' Coats." She interweaves descriptions of specific working conditions and discussions of problems faced nationwide by women in each line of work with her interviews, bringing to light aspects of each little working world rarely apparent to outsiders. Her respondants speak of the agony of having no place to sit down momentarily when business is slow in the coat department; a large insurance company's "job enrichment" program that teaches employees how to enjoy being secretaries, but not how to advance to an executive post; the temporary nature of many women's jobs, which impedes advancement and precludes job security; the housewife's realization that after 19 year of 40-hour weeks (voluntary), she has no legal claim to any part of her husband's social security benefits.

THE STRENGTH OF Howe's book lies in her presentation of the issues through the eyes of those who face them most directly. Here is not an objective study in the statistical sense of the term, for Howe has not collated material from a representative cross-section. But she points out that people are not ciphers, and her approach offers another, more personal kind of insight. And her book does not pretend to resolve anything, to give all the answers. Despite its soft pink over, the volume is meant to make its readers uncomfortable. It leaves one with conflicting impressions, dispelling some of the myths that many feminists and statisticians would have one believe. For example, How does not suggest that women are invariably oppressed; in fact, the overriding impression the book gives is that most women in traditional spheres are content to be there, but that they are angered by the stigma attached to their situations, uneasy about the lack of job security, and fatalistic about the chances for advancement. As Suzy the beautician says: "The pay is lousy, the security is lousy, the benefits are lousy, the union is lousy--but it's nice here, isn't it? It's a happy place. That's why I like to work in beauty shops."

The conflicting values--among women as much as among men--are especially striking in the chapter on "Homemakers." Most of the full-time housewives whom Howe interviewed were content with their lives and proud of their accomplishments. But in every case, the contentment was tinged with guilt feelings and with insecurities. On the one hand, the woman at home feels like a traitor to the feminist movement. On the other, she is genuinely worried about the insecurity of her position; she has no social security, no contingency plans should her husband lose the ability or desire to provide for her, no alternate job should she herself become incapacitated, and no place in the competitive job world should she be forced to find work. Howe points out that while greater life experience should increase one's chances in finding a decent job, marriage and childbearing in fact hurt them. In areas like waitressing and sales, where employers consider physical attractiveness a primary requirement, women close to retirement age are very unlikely to find work. Above all, Howe concludes, this is a boon to the male-dominated economy, which has a constant supply of cheap, temporary labor on call.

Howe's thesis is strong, her approach striking. But while the descriptive, interview-laden method is the book's strongest point, Howe's handling of it frequently detracts from the point she is trying to make. Letting the women speak for themselves is admirable; getting caught up in their personal lives to the extent that their stories obstruct analysis verges on bathos. Howe's descriptions come perilously close to true confessions--and this tendency becomes an overly heavy counterweight to abstract statistics. Her opening and closing chapters raise questions about the societal foundations underlying women's place in the labor fore, and the in-depth vignettes on each occupation bring up points of special concern to each realm of work. But the cinematic style--emotion-laden frames in sequence, too many, often too melodramatic--obscure the real questions: why are many of these women leading unfulfilling lives? Howe's work raises many disturbing questions that she never quite answers.

Nevertheless, Pink Collar Workers is a sound addition to the literature of women that has emerged in the past few years. Although she is not completely successful, Howe's attempt to chronicle the perspective of that silent majority of women in the labor force is a useful one; her effort to give body to the statistics gives them a force that is lacking in the economist's graphs.