Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Examining Men’S Status Shield And Status Bonus: How Gender Frames The Emotional Labor And Job Satisfaction Of Nurses, Marci Cottingham, Rebecca Erickson, James Diefendorff

James M. Diefendorff

(Hochschild 1983) coined the term status shield to theorize men’s status-based protection from the emotional abuses of working in a service job and hence their diminished need to manage emotions as compared to women. Extending this concept, the current study examines how gender operates not merely to shield men from emotional labor on the job but to also shape the relationship between emotional labor and job satisfaction. Using survey data collected from 730 registered nurses (667 women and 63 men) at a large Midwestern hospital system in the U.S., we show that in addition to engaging in less emotional labor …