From Behind the Scenes to Under the Skin: The Social Bodily Experiences of Stressful, Gendered Work in Police Communicators

Gender and work are complex social determinants of health. Little is known about how they intersect to shape health inequities. Differences in the acute strains and chronic stressors of particular occupations are systematically related to other socially structured categories, such as gender. Physiological representations of social structures like gender can be discerned through acute and chronic stress responses at work. The body cumulatively records the complexity of the social world, like work, translating gendered work into health inequities. Police communications (911 call-takers/dispatchers) is a gendered, high-stress occupation that requires intense emotion work and persistent social interactions. Engaging in this type of high-stakes emotionally demanding work – that I hypothesize is embodied – has the potential to shape health along gendered divisions of labour. Allostatic Load (AL) – a framework used to assess physiological dysregulation due to prolonged secretion of stress hormones – represents a construct through which the material embodiment of social life can be demonstrated. Long-term dysregulation, however, is the accumulation of repeated short-term responses that have become dysfunctional. Thus, acute physiological responses and AL, as biological registrations of social life, are used to examine how gendered work shapes health. Eighty-one communicators were individually observed as they worked. Participants wore a heart-rate-variability (HRV) monitor and received take-home questionnaires and salivary cortisol kits. Blood and physiological markers were collected for AL scores. A subset of 25 acutely stressful events also occurred, after which, saliva samples were collected for cortisol and oxytocin responses. Results indicate gender plays a role in the relationship between emotional labour and AL. Furthermore, the experience of posttraumatic stress is associated with increased AL. During acutely stressful events, changes in cortisol, oxytocin, and HRV are evident. Central to social stress responses, these physiological changes are differentially predicted by gendered workplace stressors. Findings suggest that gender structures might influence health through conformity to norms and the associated stress these relational beliefs/acts provoke. Furthermore, associations between physiological and subjective stress also point to mechanisms through which cumulative exposures to stressful events might increase the risk of stress-related disorders. Implications for future research on this biological embedding of gendered social experiences are discussed.

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