Emotional Labor

Emotional labor is the work of controlling one's feelings, usually for the pleasure or convenience of others. This occurs at work and at home, and it is borne by women.

Psychologist Alicia Grandey describes emotional labor by saying, "It’s kind of like when you get a gift and you don’t really like it, and you have to still smile and act nice because otherwise your Aunt Bernadette would be offended. But you have to do that all day long. Not only that, but it’s explicitly part of your job. It’s tied to your wages and outcomes, and if you don’t do it, there are consequences—like you could lose your job, or you could get in trouble. And it’s with strangers, for the most part.”

In 1983, Arlie Hochschild wrote about how women undertake work around emotions, helping people feel what they should and being forced to always have a smile on their faces. Women, Hochschild argues, are punished differently than men if they fail to accurately perform this emotional labor. Hochschild also identified emotional labor as alienating, because women are forced to wear an emotional mask at all times which separates women from their authentic selves.