Langhamer, Claire (2017) Feeling, women and work in the long 1950s. Women's History Review, 26 (1). pp. 77-92. ISSN 0961-2025

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Abstract

The emotional and occupational cultures of Britain underwent significant shifts during the long 1950s. This article explores the intersection between the two, using a range of social survey material – including Mass Observation sources - to explore feelings about paid work, the impact of paid employment on emotional well-being, and the management of feelings in the workplace. It article suggests that women workers were consistently constructed as both inherently emotional, and therefore unsuited for the higher occupational ranks, and as talented emotional workers able to perform unremunerated emotional labour. Whilst paid employment has often been presented as the antidote to domestic discontent, experiential evidence suggests that it also often involved the migration of private emotion work into the public domain.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Emotion, work, Britain, women
Schools and Departments:	School of Media, Arts and Humanities > History
Subjects:	D History > DA History of Great Britain
Depositing User:	Claire Langhamer
Date Deposited:	21 Jan 2016 13:15
Last Modified:	26 Apr 2023 13:06
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/59365

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