Teaching College in the Time of COVID-19: Gender and Race Differences in Faculty Emotional Labor

The COVID-19 pandemic placed new teaching demands upon faculty that may have exacerbated existing race and gender disparities in the amount of emotional labor they perform. The present study surveyed 182 full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty from three small private liberal arts colleges to examine the effect of social and professional statuses on emotional labor (i.e., managing the expression of emotions to meet job requirements) during the emergency switch to remote instruction in spring 2020. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression revealed that white cisgender men performed less emotional labor than Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) cisgender men, BIPOC cisgender women, and white cisgender women and gender non-conforming (GNC) faculty. Student demands for special favors fully mediated the relationship between intersectional race and gender identity and self-directed emotional labor and partially mediated its relationship with student-directed emotional labor. We conclude that the status shield afforded white cisgender men by their race and gender protected them from student demands that would have required them to engage in as much emotional labor as faculty with other intersectional race and gender identities during the pandemic. We discuss considering differences in emotional labor when making personnel decisions.

Automated summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new teaching demands and highlighted existing race and gender disparities in emotional labor among faculty. A study surveyed 182 full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty to examine the impact of social and professional statuses on emotional labor during the transition to remote instruction in 2020. The findings suggest that white cisgender men performed less emotional labor compared to other groups, and student demands played a mediating role.