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Wasn t COVID-19 emotional enough Gendered emotional labour through COVID-19 in a regional Australian university946.81 kB
Published Version (Advanced Access)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Wasn’t COVID-19 emotional enough? Gendered emotional labour through COVID-19 in a regional Australian university
Labour & Industry, Vol.35(2), pp.159-182
2025
Abstract
This paper examines the perceptions of increased emotional labour among staff at a regional university in Queensland, Australia, during the transition to home-based work amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The study utilises a multi-method approach to survey academic, professional, and technical staff and identifies job type, gender and significant predictors of emotional labour. Quantitative analysis indicates that women and academic staff experienced higher emotional labour than their professional and technical counterparts. The thematic analysis highlights organisational resilience expectations, emotional support roles, and institutional communication as key factors influencing emotional labour. The findings emphasise the need for structural reforms and support systems in the higher education culture to assist women in navigating the gendered challenges of remote work, work-from-home, and digital transformations. The paper discusses these results in the context of neo-liberal discourses and the concept of ‘personal resilience’ for individual workers.
Details
- Title
- Wasn’t COVID-19 emotional enough? Gendered emotional labour through COVID-19 in a regional Australian university
- Authors
- Sarah Casey (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesKaren Hands (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesPeter Innes (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and SocietyTheresa Ashford (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and SocietyJacqui Blake (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Healthy Ageing Research Cluster
- Publication details
- Labour & Industry, Vol.35(2), pp.159-182
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis Australasia
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1080/10301763.2025.2520675
- ISSN
- 2325-5676; 1030-1763
- Copyright note
- © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991128903302621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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