IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v37y2023i5p1299-1320.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender in the Flesh: Allostatic Load as the Embodiment of Stressful, Gendered Work in Canadian Police Communicators

Author

Listed:
  • Arija Birze

    (University of Toronto, Canada)

  • Elise Paradis

    (University of Toronto, Canada)

  • Cheryl Regehr

    (University of Toronto, Canada)

  • Vicki LeBlanc

    (University of Ottawa, Canada)

  • Gillian Einstein

    (University of Toronto, Canada; Linköping University, Sweden; Women’s College Research Institute, Canada)

Abstract

Gender and work are important social determinants of health, yet studies of health inequities related to the gendered and emotional intricacies of work are rare. Occupations high in emotional labour – a known job stressor – are associated with ill-health and typically dominated by women. Little is known about the mechanisms linking health with these emotional components of work. Using physiological and questionnaire data from Canadian police communicators, we adopt an embodied approach to understanding the relationship between gender norm conformity, emotional labour, and physiological dysregulation, or allostatic load. For high conformers, emotional labour leaves gendered traces in the flesh via increased allostatic load, suggesting that in this way, gendered structures in the workplace become embodied, influencing health through conformity to gender and emotion norms. Findings also reveal that dichotomous conceptions of gender may mask the impact of gendered structures, obscuring the consequences of gender for work-related stress.

Suggested Citation

  • Arija Birze & Elise Paradis & Cheryl Regehr & Vicki LeBlanc & Gillian Einstein, 2023. "Gender in the Flesh: Allostatic Load as the Embodiment of Stressful, Gendered Work in Canadian Police Communicators," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(5), pages 1299-1320, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:37:y:2023:i:5:p:1299-1320
    DOI: 10.1177/09500170221080388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170221080388
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09500170221080388?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
    ---><---

    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:37:y:2023:i:5:p:1299-1320. 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.