Спасибо очень большое (not sure that's proper "Russian" but I hope you know what I mean!!
Been trying to get my head around participles (first time I'd come across them - oh boy!) and had the sentence
Я знаю женщиню, читающую газету - perfectly happy with that - participle agrees in number, gender and case with noun it refers to - so far so good
then ... Можно видеть женщин, работающих на строике - so that was where the confusion started - it was either that видеть took the genitive (which would have really set me back 'cos I thought I had got my head around direct objects) - or... animate feminine nouns in the plural took the gentive - and yet my grammar book just says "the second alternative form for the masculine and plural accusatives is to be used with animate nouns" - which is a tad ambiguous I thought - hence the need for clarification - so thank you very much - I'm not as far off course as I was beginning to think I was and will get back to it tomorrow. Спасибо