Emotions

Gender Differences

The understanding of emotion is gendered in that they are connected to beliefs about what is typical, natural, or appropriate for women and men. Historically, particular emotions have been associated with women and with femininity. Women have been characterized as sensitive, intuitive, and immersed in personal relationships; but also as naturally weak and easy to exploit, submissive, passive, docile, dependent, and so on. From this perspective, women are considered more like children than adults in that they are immature, weak, helpless, and subject to emotional display. Yet, despite these negative connotations, women who adopt and display these characteristics are considered to be well adjusted. There have been fewer corresponding descriptions of the typical man, not least because throughout history, men have been commonly considered to be rational rather than emotional.

Most current research findings suggest very few gender differences when men and women and boys and girls are asked what they know about emotion, but the less information that is made available about a person, the more both sexes will rely on emotion stereotypes. Such stereotypes are an important part of learning the practice or performance of gendered behavior. It emerges, then, that when emotion and gender are intertwined, stereotypical speculations of masculine/feminine emotions are explored. Thus, exploring shared beliefs about emotions is one way to understand what gender means and how it operates and is negotiated in human relationships.

Groundbreaking work by Arlie Russell Hochschild highlighted the hard work associated with the regulation and management of one's own emotions and the emotions of others. Hochschild differentiated between emotional labor (the management of emotion within paid labor) and emotion(al) work (the management of emotion in personal and intimate relationships). Emotional labor and work then is performed in order to conform to dominant expectations in a given situation, and many authors suggest that in both the workplace and the home, it is women who engage in this activity more than men.

Motherhood and Emotion

Because motherhood is such a key identity for women, both the experience of motherhood and nonmotherhood is an emotional one. These are both experiences where the emotions that women feel may be judged by others and at times defined as appropriate or even denied. Feminists have demonstrated that many women feel discrepancies between how they experience the world and the official or expert definition of their identity, and the experience of nonmotherhood can result in guilt, fear, anxiety, and feelings of ambivalence and exclusion.

Involuntary and Voluntary Childlessness

Although a common experience, individual women often find miscarriage both unexpected and traumatic. This is compounded by the (sometimes) medical and social response, which suggests that the experience is a trivial one and all that the woman needs to do to get over it is to get pregnant again. This denies the often strong emotions that women feel, and supposes that miscarriage is always followed by another successful pregnancy—which is not always the case. For some—such as teenagers, single women, and women with many children—miscarriage is considered even less of a concern, perhaps even a relief, which again denies individual feelings. The emotions of those who experience late miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant or child death will likely be taken more seriously, and women will be allowed to grieve in a way in which those who experience early miscarriage are not. Yet, grief is still stigmatized as taboo, morbid, and abnormal in many cultures, and others may attempt to distract the bereaved from her feelings. Anthropological evidence from different cultures and different historical periods suggests that the management of grief can be handled in a way that makes the experience less distressing. In some cultures, for example, miscarried babies are treated as human beings in their own right and mourned in the same way. Not surprisingly, there is even less support for the distress that women who choose a termination may feel, despite the various social, medical, and material reasons that lead to this choice.

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