What Does It Mean to Perform Emotional Labour?

There’s a kind of exhaustion that rarely leaves visible evidence.

No one sees the effort it takes to monitor a room before speaking, soften criticism to protect someone else’s feelings, manage tensions, anticipate needs, smooth over conflict, or balance the emotional temperature of a workplace, family, or relationship.

In this episode of The We in Werk, we explore the concept of emotional labour: what it is, where the term came from, why it matters, and what it costs the people who perform it.

Drawing on the work of sociologist Arlie Hochschild, we trace the origins of emotional labour from service industries like aviation and customer service to its modern use in conversations about relationships, caregiving, domestic life, and gende ...