Women's emotional labour in relationships

Remembering birthdays, shopping lists, allergies, favourite foods, what is running out and needs to be replaced, realising when someone is not healthy and needs looking after, smiley customer service. All of this is emotional labour that mostly falls on women, particularly in relationships and the family dynamic. 

Emotional labour falls disproportionately on female workers, leading to an expectation that all women will manipulate their feelings and the appearance of their feelings to satisfy the expectations of their job position and the facing of customers. This pressure often doesn’t stop on the return home to family or partners - where they are still expected to keep up a supportive attitude and emotionally process for herself, her partner and/or friends.

The expectation falls on women to be the organisers and micromanagers - while others may be willing to perform household tasks, the realisation that these tasks need doing, and the delegating of them commonly falls on women, defeating the point of someone else performing the tasks in the first place. The willingness to do cleaning tasks for example is great, but the issue lies in the initiative and perceptivity. 

Performing emotional labour such as this, as well as acting as a therapist for those around them, is something women are often taught to accept as their duty and responsibility from an early age. The idea that women are always biologically programmed to be better emotion processors than men, according to gender sociologist Lisa Huebner, still has no biological basis; simply we find excuses as a society to push women and girls to be responsible and to allow men a pass. Even conversations and arguments about imbalances of emotional labour become emotional labour - conversations which are again, often started by frustrated women.

Part of this is due to the patriarchal gender roles and toxic masculinity that undeniably affects all sides - men who are expected to remain isolated and stoic in front of other men, find themselves confiding and breaking down in front of women, investing their emotions into her, rather than working through them properly, as she is the only one allowed and expected to display the emotional intimacy.

Shame is another aspect, shame that men experience after showing signs of weakness, and shame women experience for failing to meet unrealistic and complicated expectations - these issues work in a cycle to continue the status quo. It appears that one of the few ways out of this cycle is to continue encouraging communication, as well as encouraging and allowing men to confide in other men, and professionals who are equipped to deal with the issues they may have - till this becomes more widely recognised and received, the pressure will likely remain on women, and a quick glance on the comments of online discussions about this shows that we still, sadly have a long long way to go.