Abstract
Emotional labour controls one's emotions and portrays a suitable facial expression and body posture. It takes the form of two strategies, namely surface acting, and deep acting. Research on emotional labour has yielded mixed findings, both national and international. This study aimed to determine what work-related situations gave rise to experiences of emotional labour. Furthermore, to gain insight into the experiences of the emotional labour of women in leadership across industries in South Africa experience.
The study followed a qualitative approach, specifically focusing on a phenomenological strategy, utilising the purposive and snowball sampling technique to acquire participants. The inclusion criteria identified that participants had to be women in various leadership positions, ranging from junior to senior management across corporate industries in South Africa. The sample had to represent women of all races in South Africa aged 25 to 65 years, with more than five years’ work experience. Data saturation was reached at 12 participants, and a phenomenological thematic analysis method was utilised to analyse the raw data from the interviews.
Conditions identified from the data included the intention to exceed expectations, adopting transformational or transactional leadership behaviours to meet deadlines, suppressing emotions at work to get work done, degree of maturity of emotional intelligence, avoiding stereotyping, and family spillover. The findings suggest that all these situations give rise to emotional labour for women in leadership positions.
Keywords: Emotional labour, women in leadership, transformational and transactional leadership, suppression, overperformance, family spillover.