The Yugoslav Women and their Pickled Herrings is a poetic interpretation of working class women in the workforce in South Australia and Victoria. 1960-2000 by South Australian poet Cathy Young. It looks at the conditioning factors of girls and women, migrant life, institution labour (the author having been a "home girl") and other "down" jobs (factories, strippers, prostitutes, outsourcing) - the duties and conditions, lives, loves, psyches and role in the scheme of things from an historical perspective determined by the social & political conditions of the times.

This is a journey from child migrant to hard-headed woman who has worked at 35 different jobs under 30 different pay systems, sharing with the reader some of the interesting and diverse situations encountered along the way.