56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST At the risk of some oversimplification, we can isolate from the rather large and mixed-bag literature on white collar! tes in the US and elsewhere three core missions assigned to them: (1) an elite or managerial mission, in which at least some elements of the white-collar strata are to become, to the extent that they not already are, the enlightened and efficient rulers of society; (2) a middle-class stabilizing mission, in which most people in the labour force will achieve "middle class" life styles, and in which most jobs will become either white collar or skilled blue collar to the degree that collar colour would not matter, that is, a mission in which democratic government reflects a middle-class (white-collar) majority; and (3) a class struggle mission in which at least some white-collar groupings will move Leftward to join or displace the blue-collar proletariat as the major lever for change, even as some other white-collar groupings may move towards the Right. Fundamental Questions Let us remove the debate from the realms of abstraction or from the historical and theoretical, level, and project the issues into the concrete present using the opportunity provided by -the hitherto largely neglected occupational stratum that is also sex-linked, namely, women office workers, and examine two fundamental questions: Are women office workers "working class" or "middle class91?; What is the significance of women office workers as a social, economic and political phenomenon? In the endeavour this article will examine five areas: 1 What are women office workers, in terms of definition and in the context of social class theory? 2 How has this stratum come to occupy its present historical position? , 3 What is the size and position of this social category relative to the rest of the labour force? 4 What is the present condition of women office workers? 5 What are some of the social and political implications of this condition and in particular its impact on the women's movement and trade unionism? The basic thesis of this article is that the woman office worker is a proletarian by her position as a wage-earner, her status as an indirect contributor to the generation of surplus-value, the conditions of her servitude in the modern office-factory (including her vulnerability to the fluctuations of the labour market),the actions she takes to protect her status at the workplace, and at least to a significant degree, her relationship to other sectors of the working class through her family ties. Further, her being a woman introduces a second oppressive condition to overlay her first exploitative one. The prognosis, it will be argued, is that when these two factors are combined, a politically volatile mixture can, potentially, result. For the purposes of this discussion, an office worker will be defined any person listed under the "clerical" category by the US Bureau of the