Gender and Emotional Labor inPublic Organizations:An Empirical Examination of the Link toPerformance.

Over the last twenty years, scholars of public organizations have developed the concept of emotional labor in studies of gender in the workforce (Hochschild 1983, Goleman 1998, Guy and Newman forthcoming). Some scholars argue that female employees frequently face expectations to provide additional assets to an organization that focus on interpersonal skills including caring, negotiating, or moderating conflict. The skills females bring to an organization are many times over looked and under compensated despite the fact that they play a vital role in the success of many organizations (Guy and Newman, forthcoming). Of these two issues, this paper will focus on how emotional labor contributes to the success of organizations. To the extent that some organizations have access to greater levels of emotional labor, we would expect that these levels would be correlated with higher commitment to the organization and better clientele relationships. This study will test these assertions using data from Texas public school districts, examining the relationship between increased number of female teachers and three dependent variables-teacher turnover, student attendance rates, and student performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]