Emotional and Aesthetic Labour: Ingredients to Sexual Harassment in the Sky?

Abstract
This paper provides a view on emotional and aesthetic labour and whether they can be related to sexual harassment in the workplace. Under the scope is the work of flight attendants as their job includes a significant amount of emotional and aesthetic labour. Ways of improving the position of flight attendants in the workplace are also recommended.

Keywords
Sexual harassment, emotional labour, aesthetic labour, flight attendants


Originally flight attendants were in the plane to make passengers feel safe and secure but it did not take long before the airline companies started emphasising the aesthetic and “server-like” emotional sides of the job (Hochschild, 1983). Aesthetic side has long been an important factor when advertising the airline industry and throughout the years, there has been certain aesthetic restrictions for people willing to become flight attendants. These restrictions include for example certain body structure, weight management, straight teeth, and so on. The looks seem to play a significant role in any service job where the employees are in contact with customers but it would seem that in terms of flight attendants, the requirements have gone a bit too far when people have been even fired just because they have gained a pound.

There is no doubt that we have all seen the advertisements of airline companies and have witnessed how flight attendants are used as marketing devices. According to Hochschild (1983), it is common for airlines to promote in their advertisements that the service is personal and flight attendants are friendly and helpful but what makes the difference are the words chosen to be used which can be sexualising such as “Fly me, you'll like it”.

However, categorising flight attendants under the word “sexy” can not be blamed just on the shoulders of marketers because the labelling has remained for a long period of time and has been drilled into people's minds. Nevertheless, the marketing highlights the sexual image the flight attendants already present and this might make passengers think they have the right to act how they wish which may lead to sexual harassment.

Of course, the sexualisation of flight attendants can not be generalised as there are several airlines not using this kind of marketing tactic. It would seem that low-cost airlines are the ones using the approach the most which Hochshild (1983) justifies with low-cost carriers not having the resources to compete in terms of in-flight entertainment or such, which is why the companies have chosen to market their services through flight attendants.

The working environment of flight attendants serves as a ground for sexual harassment for the close interaction with customers and the emotional and aesthetic side of the work. The possibility of sexual harassment becomes even higher with the unusual working hours and time-zone differences.

Because of the emotional labour, the employees are not able to react to sexual harassment right when it occurs because they are expected to put their own emotions aside when serving the passengers. Moreover, it is almost impossible to avoid further contact with the harasser during the flight because there is no-one who can take ones place in the middle of the flight.

In a resent study by Thompson (2014) of sexual harassment of flight attendants, it was revealed that out of 392 women flight attendants, 29% reported being sexually harassed during working hours in the last twelve months. The form of sexual harassment was mainly physical such as touching or pinching, and 59% of the harassment came from passengers while the rest came from other members of the crew.

According to Thompson (2014), most international airlines do have set policies for sexual harassment. However, the problem is that the employees are not aware of the policies or they have not been informed how to act in case of sexual harassment. This leads to very minimal reporting of sexual harassment incidents. EOC (2014) researched flight attendants of an Italian national airline about sexual harassment in the workplace and discovered that only 6% of the victims had reported the incident formally. The main reasons for not reporting the incidents were that they did not think it would help (17%), thought the situation would get worse (16%), considered the process to be too complicated (15%) or felt like they did not have the time or energy to make a report (14%).

Recommendations
The sexual harassment cases might be minimised by getting rid of certain aesthetic requirements and changing the marketing strategy. Even though there is emotional labour involved, it should be made possible for the employees to react for unwanted behaviour. If the employee just acts according to emotional labour which means ignoring the incident, smiling and continuing to serve the passenger as normal, the passenger may just continue the behaviour.

In the future, the focus should be on making the employees aware of the company policy statement and the company should provide training on how to act in a situation of sexual harassment. The employer should encourage the workers to report if any unwanted behaviour occurs during the working hours. Also, it should be clearly stated how the company will react in these incidents and make it clear that every report is taken seriously.

References
EOC. (2014). Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in Employment – Questionnaire Survey for Flight Attendants. Available: http://www.eoc.org.hk/EOC/Upload/ResearchReport/SHFlightAttendants_e.pdf. Last accessed 17th April 2014.

Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press.

Thompson, C. (2014). Report: 27% of flight attendants sexually harassed. Available: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/21/travel/flight-attendant-sexual-harrassment/. Last accessed 17th April 2014.

The reason I chose to commentate on this paper is because the author has conducted a study, which closely relates to mine. However, even though both case studies are based on the concept of emotional and aesthetic labour, many differences can be noted in the approach used to analyse or evaluate the findings.
This piece of work provides a review on emotional and aesthetic labour and explore whether they can relate to sexual harassment in the workplace. Furthermore the paper studies the lack of awareness on sexual harassment policy in the workplace and provides recommendations in how to secure and improve their job.

While I think the author provides a fine, array of issues to consider here in general, I would take some issues with the balance of this discussion and what is left out. It seems that more emphasis was placed on the sexual harassment experienced by women flight attendants. However what the author failed to mention is that, sexual harassment in the airline industry is experienced in both sexes (female as well as male flight attendant) even though, many a times, women are the main victim’s of this unpleasant and unwelcome behaviour as revealed by the author statistics of about 29%. It is argued that 17% of men flight attendants have also experienced sexual harassment while on in-flight duty (Johansson, 2014).

The author claims that the sexualisation of flight attendants cannot be generalised as there are several airlines not using this kind of marketing tactics. Although this can be stated to be true, however, I will have to disagree with this argument. In fact the introduction of emotional and aesthetic labour in the airline industry which dates back to the 1950s were a pretty good tactics to commercialise and sexualise their employees as it is argued that by doing so the company will gain a good competitive advantage over their competitors. “Looking good” (Warhurt and Nickson, 2007). In my opinion the only difference is that some airline does it with more discursion than others but the final goal is the same.

Overall, the author has successfully explained the concept of emotional and aesthetic labour and has shown their relationship to sexual harassment in the workplace. The paper has good arguments and its well - structured. It is evidently clear that, the author has done a good reading and research on the topic justifying that the author has a pretty good understanding of the topic and its stand. However the author could further research into how male flight attendants are harassed in the workplace to give a more balance of the topic.


References

Johanson, M. (2014) 27 Percent of flight attendants sexually harassed on the job. [Online] Available from
http://www.ibtimes.com/27-percent-flight-attendants-sexually-harassed-job-1557418. [Accessed 8 May 2014].

Warhurst, Ch. and Nickson, D. (2009) “Who” s got the look? “ Emotional, Aesthetic and Sexualized labour in interactive services. Gender, Work and Organization, 16(3) 386 – 404.