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

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.

Automated summary

Gender and work are important social determinants of health, and occupations high in emotional labor, usually dominated by women, are associated with ill-health. This study explores the relationship between gender norm conformity, emotional labor, and physiological dysregulation using data from Canadian police communicators. The findings suggest that emotional labor increases allostatic load for individuals who highly conform to gender norms, indicating that gendered structures in the workplace can influence health through conformity to gender and emotion norms. Additionally, the study reveals that dichotomous conceptions of gender may mask the impact of gendered structures on work-related stress.