The Managed Heart

The book explores the gendered aspects of emotional labor, highlighting how societal norms and economic disparities place a disproportionate burden on women. As a consequence of women’s subordinate position in society, they disproportionately hold jobs in which they must engage in emotional labor. The patriarchal society expects to see women in nurturing and caregiving roles. This additional pressure exacerbates the impact of jobs requiring emotional labor because women must often perform emotional labor both at work and in their personal lives.

Because women have more limited access to economic resources and power, they often resort to using emotional labor as a means of exchange. The text notes that emotional skills become a vital resource for women because these skills can help compensate for their lack of personal material wealth and authority. This necessity arises from the economic gap, where significantly fewer women than men earn high incomes. As a result, women cultivate emotional and relational skills, offering them as a form of compensation in both personal and professional contexts.

Moreover, the book discusses how childhood socialization embeds the differing types of emotional labor that society expects from men and women. Society typically expects women to manage emotions related to nurturing and caretaking, while men are socialized to handle emotions tied to assertiveness and aggression. This early training leads to a specialization in emotional labor: Employers most often hire women in roles requiring the suppression of negative emotions to maintain harmony, such as caregiving or customer service positions. On the other hand, employers tend to hire men much more often to fill roles that involve expressing dominance or anger, such as bill collection or managerial positions. This gender-specific emotional labor not only reinforces traditional gender roles but also shapes the emotional experiences and expectations of men and women differently. The author examines how the general subordination of women results in a weaker “status shield” against the negative emotions of others. For example, airline passengers are more likely to verbally abuse female flight attendants than their male counterparts because societal perceptions cast women as more approachable and less authoritative, which makes them easier targets for displaced aggression.

In addition, the book highlights how the labor that women perform often goes unrecognized and uncompensated, unlike more tangible, technical skills that are visibly rewarded and acknowledged in the workplace. For example, an Australian nurse shared her frustration over the emotional labor in the medical field, illustrating how despite the critical emotional support that nurses (who are mostly women) provide to patients—especially in life-or-death situations—their work remains largely invisible and undervalued compared to the work of the surgeons (who are mostly men).

The author also examines the commercial exploitation of women’s emotional labor. Women often react to their subordinate status by using their emotional skills, such as charm and relational abilities, which become commodified in the workplace. These skills, while valuable, are prone to exploitation, leading to estrangement from one’s own emotions. For example, employers expect women in service roles to constantly display warmth and friendliness, even when they do not genuinely feel these emotions. This expectation creates a dissonance between their true feelings and their professional demeanor, resulting in emotional exhaustion and a sense of inauthenticity, thereby exacerbating the emotional labor they perform.