Attitudinal and Behavioral Consequences of Gendered Emotional Labor in Male- and Female-Dominated Professions: A Comparison between Police and Social Work in Two Cultural Contexts

The proposed research project will investigate and compare gendered emotional labor and its consequences for men and women in the police (disproportionately male) and social work (disproportionately female). Emotional labor refers to work that requires the expression of appropriate emotions during service encounters. Conventional gender roles determine the types of emotional labor performed by each sex, i.e. men as disciplinarians and women as caretakers. Yet, as men and women progressively move into occupations traditionally dominated by the opposite sex, will stereotypical patterns of emotional labor still exist and exact a toll on gender minorities due to their marginalized status in the workplace? Will minority males and females confront different consequences of gendered emotional labor? Will that effect hinge on one’s gender role orientation? Answers to these questions will advance managerial knowledge yet they remain unavailable in extant research. This project will draw on two lines of research to answer the research questions: (1) the theory of emotional labor, which will lay the theoretical groundwork for understanding gendered emotional labor and its consequences, and (2) evidence from a range of gender-emotion studies that will add contextual elements to the theoretical framework. Moreover, as culture is relevant to gender norms, research will be conducted in both Chinese and American contexts to assess the generalizability of the research findings across boundaries. It is proposed that gender minorities perceive and perform emotional labor differently compared with their colleagues in the majority. Moreover, this difference will be greater for both those working in the male-dominated police force, and those in patriarchal Chinese society. Additionally, workers who deviate from prevailing norms of emotional labor will impair work morale and reduce effort to meet organizational expectations, but this effect will be mitigated by gender role orientation. This project will use the explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to investigate these propositions and explain research results, as this design will allow the researchers to build the broadest and deepest knowledge on this particular subject. The research team will be led by two public administration scholars with expertise in emotional labor. The PI has previously conducted extensive research on this subject using Chinese and American samples, while the Co-I is considered the pioneering researcher of emotional labor in the public administration community. They will form an ideal team to undertake this study. This project will produce research papers that disseminate findings and offer guidance for more effective management of emotional labor in gender-skewed workplaces.