[“For women, expected constantly to be displaying nurturing, altruistic qualities, taking on what is called “agentic” behavior—dominant, assertive, competitive—seen as male in order to ascend professionally would inevitably cause such a backlash.
In order to modulate the backlash, and not be seen as too hungry for power or too eager to get ahead, women have to play a game of compensation. As they assert themselves as competent and confident, they must also dole out doses of reassuring emotional labor. Because these two sets of character traits are often cast in opposition to each other—as expressions of domination and submission rather than as complementary—conveying both at the same time can feel like an impossible bind. This becomes even more of a burden for anyone who veers from traditional, heteronormative behavioral scripts, particularly for those of us whose brains process social situations differently, whether because of neurodivergence or any other unseen reason. These charades of contradictory communication create roadblocks that compromise productivity rather than promote it, as some would have us believe.
One woman I interviewed, Hailey, who rose up to director in a large, male-dominated West Coast company, identifies and presents as queer, and tells me her instinctive communication style is outgoing, direct, and what might be seen traditionally as alpha. “I always came to meetings with all guns blazing,” Hailey says, adding she easily inhabits “a male space in the workplace.”
But as she climbed the ladder at her company and became surrounded by only men, she found that her gender expression was increasingly being ignored. Her female identity kept on being forced down her throat by her male colleagues, and her queer, more masculine- performing energy was squashed out. “I occupy this middle space. I am a dyke, of course: I out myself all the time. But I still had to fill some of those female expectations. I couldn’t just live in this male box.”
A male colleague sat her down and told her she needed to be more discreet and couldn’t just be her “outgoing self” anymore. She had to do double the work to ingratiate herself in a way that was more feminine, regardless of whether that felt authentic to her identity. It didn’t, in fact. She started using “soft skills” she had mostly eschewed up until then in her career and started having water cooler conversations and coffee meetings on top of formal meetings in order to win people over, be accepted, and get done the basic things she needed in the department she directed. “I used to think that the higher you get, the more it’s going to be based on accomplishments and skills, but I don’t know anymore.”
She couldn’t be herself: she was not afforded that space or that privilege. The emotional labor she was forced into providing wasn’t expected of men, and the expectation, which also violated her gender expression, felt debasing. By the time she left the company, she says she is not sure whether she was most discriminated against because of her perceived gender, her sexual orientation and related identity, or her ideas, which were pushing for greater sustainability and attention to underserved communities.
The ability to change, mask, or suppress the expression of our authentic emotions is a uniquely human characteristic. We can laugh to suit a situation even if we find it supremely unfunny, appear despondent to suit another when inside we are giggling, and appear passively pleasant in situations in between. We can all do this and, in fact, all engage in this, to varying degrees, all the time.
At work, the expectation that people should do the emotional labor to put on a professional face is not something reserved for just women. Being professional will likely include a basic level of politeness, the exchange of a few formal niceties—greetings, a smile, maybe a question or two about the weekend. There will likely be the expectation of a levelheadedness and an evening or modulating of the temperature of emotional expression in communications—whether in person, over the phone, or over email: not too hot and angry, and not too cold and abrupt.
But because deference and filtering of emotions go with power, in traditional work environments, the higher up you go, the less emotional labor you absolutely have to do. An intern will be expected to be more deferential than a junior associate, who will be expected to be more deferential than a vice president, who will be expected to be more deferential than the founder and CEO. This holds until you introduce elements of gender expression and identity, race and class, as further and less linear expressions of power. A male junior associate might get away with being abrupt with colleagues where a female senior associate will not. A white male associate may feel free to speak loudly and animatedly with colleagues, where a Black male associate may be told to quiet down and be issued a warning.”]
rose hackman, from emotional labor: the invisible work shaping our lives and how to claim our power, 2023
