Why The Emotional Rights Of Women Are Important In Life
We’ve all heard of women’s rights, but are you aware of emotional rights? Do you know that women and girls have emotional rights that the patriarchy and gender socialisation keeps a secret from them in order to uphold societal systems? Do you know that being a woman doesn’t mean you have to look after everyone else instead of yourself, and you can learn how to give yourself permission to live life for yourself? If you don’t, then read on.
It’s no secret that women in today’s society often find themselves juggling multiple roles and responsibilities, but have you ever stopped to consider why this pattern persists?
Beyond their visible contributions, women also bear the burden of something known as emotional labour. This invisible workload encompasses the mental and emotional efforts used to manage and maintain relationships, support others, and ensure the smooth functioning of both personal and professional spheres. Unfortunately, this crucial aspect of women’s lives and its impact on women’s mental health and wellbeing often goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
The Division Of Genders
Societal expectations and traditional gender roles typically assign women the responsibility of managing emotional dynamics within families, friendships, and workplaces. Women are assumed to possess innate nurturing qualities, perpetuating the stereotype that they are naturally more skilled in emotional labour. This unspoken assumption burdens women unfairly, diverting their time and energy away from personal growth and self-care.
Women are taught from an early age that it is their responsibility to make sure everyone else is happy and supported, and this persists in gender socialisation through a form of intergenerational sexism where both men and women contribute to upholding the systems that enable the status quo to continue.
All of this takes place unconsciously, and many women who may see themselves as forward-thinking and ‘for women’s rights’ still typically teach daughters to fulfil gender norms in the home. Even when a man contributes to the household tasks, it is usually the woman who holds the ‘mental load’ of emotional labour - the invisible work of a household, in the form of the responsibility of conceptualising, planning and executing tasks in the home regardless of whether they do the task themselves or ask someone else to do it.
“Women will not enjoy full equality and visibility until they wake up and realise how damaging female sacrifice and selfishness is to everyone: women, daughters, sisters, and yes, fathers, sons, and husbands too.” Rosjke Hasseldine (2007)
Defining Emotional Labour
Before we move on, let’s examine what emotional labour is. Emotional labour refers to the invisible, unpaid work that individuals undertake to manage and regulate emotions in order to create a pleasant social environment. Women, in particular, are disproportionately affected by this burden due to societal expectations and gender norms. They are often expected to be the primary caregivers, nurturers, and emotional supporters within their families and communities. This labour involves active listening, offering empathy and advice, managing conflict, and providing emotional support to friends, family members, and colleagues.
The Impact on Women
The relentless weight of emotional labour takes a toll on women’s wellbeing and overall quality of life. Constantly shouldering the responsibility of managing others’ emotions can lead to emotional exhaustion, increased stress levels, and mental health issues. Furthermore, the invisibility of this labour contributes to its underappreciation, leaving women feeling undervalued and overwhelmed.
The emotional labour burden also intersects with other aspects of women’s lives, such as their professional careers. Studies show that women often end up taking on more emotional labour at work, such as managing conflicts or dealing with demanding clients, leading to increased job stress and reduced job satisfaction.
Workplace Implications
In professional settings, women are frequently expected to perform emotional labour beyond their job responsibilities. This can manifest as taking on caretaking roles, providing emotional support to colleagues, and navigating workplace conflicts.
How many times have you been someone’s ‘work mum’ taking on the job of listening to their problems and helping them to fix them? This additional emotional labour can hinder women’s career advancement opportunities by moving the focus from themselves onto others and perpetuating gender inequalities. Recognising and addressing these disparities is crucial for creating more inclusive and equitable workplaces.
The Toll on Women’s Wellbeing
Emotional labour takes a toll on women’s mental and emotional wellbeing. Constantly being attuned to the needs and emotions of others is draining, often leading to emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and even burnout. Combined with the fact that the emotional load carried by women often goes unnoticed and unappreciated, feelings of resentment, frustration, and a sense of being taken for granted can occur.
Women often end up feeling like crap from the weight of the mental load of emotional labour; they’re tired and often numb inside. They think it’s their fault that they’re unhappy and struggling to do everything. They believe the answer is to try harder to do everything, to be good enough, and, if they solve that, they will be ‘rescued’ from misery by others finally seeing everything they do, so they will then be able to do the things they want to do for themselves.
Ultimately, the unrecognised impact on women’s physical and mental health can be enormous.
What Can We Do To Change This?
Challenging Gender Expectations
It is essential to challenge and redefine societal gender expectations to alleviate the burden of emotional labour. Breaking free from traditional gender roles will promote a more equitable distribution of emotional labour within relationships and communities. It is crucial to recognise that emotional labour is not solely a women’s responsibility but a shared responsibility among all individuals. Encouraging open communication and fostering emotional intelligence in both men and women will help distribute the workload more evenly.
All of that is easy to say, but how can we do this, even in a home where the typical partner dynamic doesn’t exist?
If you share a home with roommates or adult children rather than a partner, you will likely be aware of the dynamic that takes place where one person is taking on the majority of emotional labour. In my own home, shared with one of my adult daughters, we typically have a dynamic where I take on the majority of emotional labour because I am mum, and I am beginning to feel resentful about this.
Rebalancing the Load
It is essential to foster a culture that values and acknowledges emotional labour as legitimate work to alleviate the burden of emotional labour on women. This involves promoting shared responsibility within relationships and encouraging men to actively participate in emotional labour.
Education and awareness campaigns that exist to further the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality by 2030 try to challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, empowering both men and women to engage in emotional labour more equitably, but progress is not being made. The problem is, as mentioned above that social and gender norms actively work against the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and therefore women are not making the progress needed (Hoominfar, 2021). There’s that sneaky patriarchal system playing a part again.
So how do we rebalance the load? One new system I am about to try with my adult daughter is the slightly problematic Fair Play system created by Eve Rodsky. Fair Play is a time-and anxiety-saving system that offers people a new way to share domestic responsibilities by gamifying household chores. The reason I’ve described it as slightly problematic is because it still puts the responsibility on women to open a conversation with their partners and implement this system. My inherent belief is that men know what happens in the home, and they choose to let someone else do the work because they benefit from it. They don’t need ‘training’, if they wanted to live in an equal household they would do the work to make it so. Men aren’t babies; they’re grown adults just like women. Gender conditioning creates the beliefs that men don’t notice the work that needs doing in the household, and that the work is a woman’s responsibility. Unfortunately women often unknowingly fall in to the trap of upholding these beliefs until they start to unlearn patriarchal conditioning.
The hype around this system on social media is substantial; I will report back in a few months whether it works! (And yes, I’m aware of the irony that we are both women).
Support, Self-Care and Emotional Rights
In addition to societal changes, women must learn to prioritise themselves to allow themselves to step away from being the sole owner of the responsibility of the mental load without feeling guilty or selfish.
Establishing boundaries, learning to delegate tasks, and asking for help are essential steps toward managing emotional labour. Engaging in activities that benefit mental and emotional wellbeing, such as creativity, mindfulness practices, or pursuing hobbies, can help women replenish their emotional reserves. Moreover, building honest conversations about emotional labour, including friends, family, or support groups, can provide a space for women to share their experiences, validate their emotions, find solace in knowing they are not alone and contribute to the change we all need.
This all sounds easy to do doesn’t it? But the reality of the situation is that even when women are aware that they don’t have to do it all and they try some self-care or go on a retreat, nothing works; they may feel better for a short while when they try to put themselves first but still have deep unhappiness inside, and they don’t know why.
But there’s a secret about emotional labour - that it’s not women’s responsibility… and women have emotional rights that they are often unaware of.
Gender socialisation, the patriarchy, religious beliefs, and the media all contribute to keeping emotional rights a secret from women and girls. The lack of public conversations and awareness of emotional rights benefit the patriarchy and upholds systems of unequal power as these systems are built by those who profit from women’s unpaid work.
The real answer to this problem is women learning how to create permission to live their lives for themselves instead of for others. In other words, women have permission to take care of themselves and engage in activities they enjoy without feeling guilty or selfish (we have emotional rights).
The key to this is becoming emotionally unsilenced, honouring your emotional rights and stopping trying to be good enough. This starts from a place of creating awareness: becoming aware of and understanding how your existing behaviour impacts you before making personal changes to increase your ability to advocate for your needs.
So How Can You Become Aware of Your Emotional Rights?
Becoming aware of your emotional rights and learning tools to allow yourself to live life for yourself is the first step to breaking the cycle of gender socialisation and intergenerational sexism, both for you and future generations of women and girls everywhere. One tool I created which has helped me break my patterns is The Women’s Manifesto, a Bill of Emotional Rights.
At the heart of The Women’s Manifesto is the recognition that self-care and respecting your needs are essential to a woman’s emotional wellbeing. This includes the right to focus on yourself, to say no to others’ requests, and to be unconditionally accepted and respected. It also emphasises the importance of autonomy and the right to make your own decisions. The right to safety and autonomy over your body is a fundamental right that women are far too often deprived of.
The Women’s Manifesto is a powerful statement that underscores the importance of valuing yourself, self-care, and the right to be seen, heard, and respected. It also recognises the impact of systemic oppression on mental health and the need for a mental health system that is inclusive, empathetic, and trauma-informed. However, as we work to make impactful changes, we must recognise the unique challenges marginalised communities face. Women in these communities face additional barriers and discrimination that must be acknowledged and addressed in the fight for gender equality. It shouldn’t be a fight, but it is.
Click here to download The Women’s Manifesto as a pdf.
Final Thoughts
Emotional labour is a significant and often unrecognised burden that women carry.
Recognising and addressing the disproportionate burden of emotional labour on women is crucial for achieving gender equality. By challenging societal expectations, promoting shared responsibility, and giving ourselves permission to prioritise ourselves through honouring our emotional rights, we can begin to alleviate this burden and create a more balanced and equitable society where emotional labour is acknowledged and shared by all. And women, it starts with us.
If you want to start your own journey of becoming aware of how intergenerational sexism and gender norms affect you, an excellent place to start is The Silent Female Scream by Rosjke Hasseldine.
“Learn how to believe that as a woman you have the right to be heard, valued and respected, and to know that anything less is just not okay” Rosjke Hasseldine (2007)
