IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v14y2000i1p77-95.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Emotional Labour and Sexual Difference in the Airline Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Steve Taylor

    (School of Social Sciences University of Teesside MIDDLESBROUGH TS1 3BA)

  • Melissa Tyler

    (School of Social Sciences University of Teesside MIDDLESBROUGH TS1 3BA)

Abstract

This paper examines service work within the contemporary airline industry which has recently been shaped by managerial initiatives aiming to deliver `quality service'. We focus upon the gendered consequences of this. On the basis of original empirical research, three specific arguments are advanced: firstly, recent competitive pressures and accompanying managerial initiatives are intensifying demands upon female employees for the production of emotional labour, subjective commitment to organisational aims and sexual difference within parts of the airline industry; secondly, despite the enormous power of such managerial demands, the `spaces' for female employees to comply, consent and resist remain `open' within the aspects of the industry studied; thirdly, the power of the gendered managerial prescription investigated here is related to the way it is embedded within the structural and inequitable capital-labour relation. The paper is informed by an approach which places the process of gendering inside class relations, and stresses the need to empirically interrogate the historically-specific `lived experience' of gendered power relations in order to adequately analyse and explain such phenomena.

Suggested Citation

  • Steve Taylor & Melissa Tyler, 2000. "Emotional Labour and Sexual Difference in the Airline Industry," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 14(1), pages 77-95, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:14:y:2000:i:1:p:77-95
    DOI: 10.1177/09500170022118275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170022118275
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09500170022118275?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joan Sangster & Julia Smith, 2016. "Beards and Bloomers: Flight Attendants, Grievances and Embodied Labour in the Canadian Airline Industry, 1960s–1980s," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 183-199, March.
    2. Richard Godfrey & Joanna Brewis, 2018. "‘Nowhere else sells bliss like this’: Exploring the emotional labour of soldiers at war," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(6), pages 653-669, November.
    3. Chang, Joshua & Travaglione, Antonio & O’Neill, Grant, 2015. "How can gender signal employee qualities in retailing?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 24-30.
    4. Baum, Tom, 2012. "Working the skies: Changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930–2011," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1185-1194.
    5. Ngai, Steven Sek-yum & Cheung, Chau-kiu & Yuan, Rui, 2016. "Effects of vocational training on unemployed youths' work motivation and work engagement: Mediating roles of training adequacy and self-actualization," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 93-100.
    6. Cheung, Chau-kiu & Ngai, Ngan-pun, 2010. "Training to raise unemployed youth's work commitment in Tianjin," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 298-305, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:14:y:2000:i:1:p:77-95. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.