‘Put me on to a male agent’: Emotional labor and performing gender in call centers

Abstract

Spanish

French

This article aims to shed light on the gender dynamics in the context of performing emotional labor in Turkish call centers. Based on qualitative interviews, this study aimed to illuminate how gender is done and undone, providing a perspective on the relationship between gender and emotional labor in call centers, a highly gendered and interactional line of work. Gender relations are complex and gender performativity in call center work allows us to observe different ways in which employees do and undo gender. This study reveals that female employees are more inclined to undo gender and display competence as a work strategy to elevate their position, whereas male employees struggle between job demands and adhering to masculine norms.

Keywords

Doing gender emotional labor gender performativity undoing gender

Introduction

Generally, there is this thing: if the person on the phone is furious, and they hear our voice as a female, they say ‘put me on to a male agent’. Why? To be able to swear, to be able to use foul language. They say, ‘because I can’t swear at you’

—Int 1, F

In a world that is becoming increasingly automized, the ability to manage emotions is ironically both a sought-after skill and undervalued as a ‘natural’ gift, disproportionately endowed to women. It is further complicated by gender norms and assumptions, as seen from the above example. In this study, by taking call centers as an illustrative case, I aim to understand how gender influences the practice of emotional labor. Previous studies on gender and emotional labor (Gray, 2010; Hochschild, 1983; Kelan, 2008) demonstrated that this is a gendered line of work and women are seen as naturally good at performing it, which effectively makes their work invisible. I aim to approach gender as a performative phenomenon rather than as a static category; as what people do, rather than what they are (Butler, 2004; Deutsch, 2007; West and Zimmerman, 1987). Since this is a very dynamic and interactive line of work, a performative notion of gender is a highly suitable means by which to analyze emotional labor and enhance our understanding of gender performance in the work context. Such a perspective is crucial as some of the previous studies on gender and emotional labor have treated gender as a static variable but not as a performative phenomenon (Cottingham et al., 2015; Lewig and Dollard, 2003).

Turkey is a particular context since there are vibrant discussions on women’s right and a growing consciousness of gender equality among the new generation, along with severe structural inequalities. This peculiarity is the source of multiple orientations with gender identities and a richness of opinions and conduct in terms of gender performance. Turkish culture is defined as collectivist and patriarchal in the overall (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996) and this relationality also reflects to Turkish men embracing ‘feminine’ traits of caring for others and not showing open aggression, especially to authority figures¹ (Lease et al., 2013; Özkan and Lajunen, 2005). A culture of relatedness and collectivism exist as a general framework but especially young urbanite educated women have exposure to egalitarian norms and they begin to embrace more ‘traditionally masculine’ traits of independence and agency (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1996). While this culture of relatedness continues, there are changes in gender norms about women; they score higher than before in the self-assessment of masculine traits, especially instrumental traits such as being independent, self-sufficient and having leadership skills (Özkan and Lajunen, 2005).

Multiple orientations with gender identities, especially of women, can be explained with the modernization process of the country. After the loss of the young, urbanite, and educated male population due to consecutive wars, early Republican elites highly encouraged women’s public visibility through obtaining higher education and pursuing careers (Göle, 2002; Kandiyoti, 1987). The central aim of modernization was not liberating the women but modernizing the nation (Kandiyoti, 1987); therefore, this encouragement had relatively limited effect outside of urbanite educated circles, creating a multiplicity of gender regimes. On one hand, educated women find themselves a place in traditionally male-dominated fields (Öncü, 1981), on the other low levels of labor force participation and precarious employment in the informal sector prevail (Yaman Öztürk and Dedeoğlu, 2010). The lack of comprehensive support mechanisms (such long paid leaves and accessible childcare) makes working women rely on informal relations for childcare and housework and those who lack such support leave employment (Kandiyoti, 1987; Yaman Öztürk and Dedeoğlu, 2010).

While the overall female labor force participation is low, call center business is an area where women employees outnumber men. It is regarded as a suitable job for women (safe, does not require physical strength, and involves communication, which is supposedly women’s forte). Although it is a positive development to have more women in the labor force, the quality of employment and the social outcomes of work are also important. Being in paid employment does not automatically improve women’s conditions; the content of the job also matters (Narlı and Akdemir, 2019) as underpaid work that constantly erodes women’s agency is not an empowering form of employment. So, this article’s contribution will be to gain an understanding of gender in the dynamic relations of performing emotional labor in a female-dominated work context. A better understanding of how gender is performed can give us clues about strategies and ways to empower workers and promote more egalitarian work environments.

In the following sections, after a discussion of the concept of emotional labor and how it has been theorized, I aim to discuss gender performativity through doing and undoing gender and the concept of masculinities. Then, I will provide an overview of my approaches to data collection and analysis in the ‘Methodology’ section and present the main findings. Finally, I will discuss how gender influences emotional labor and what this study’s contributions to the literature.

Theoretical framework

Hochschild (1983) first conceptualized emotional labor as labor that ‘requires one to induce or suppress feelings in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others – in this case, the sense of being cared for in a convivial and safe place’ (p. 7). Inspired by Marxist theory, emotional labor is conceptualized as something that can be exchanged in the market, just like physical and mental labor, and cause the alienation of the workers from their labor.

Studies on emotional labor differ in their focus. While one group of studies focus on the exploitation of emotions as a structural condition (Brook, 2011; Lewig and Dollard, 2003; Van Jaarsveld and Poster, 2013), another (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Bolton, 2004; Bolton and Boyd, 2003) underlines workers’ agency. The possibility of voluntary and genuine displays of emotions and having some degree of control over work does not change the fact that emotional labor is a form of labor that is exchanged in the market and service sector employees may become alienated (Brook, 2009, 2011; Hochschild, 1983). In addition, external market conditions such as fear of unemployment undermine employees’ agency (Narlı and Akdemir, 2019).

Emotional labor is not an exchange among equals in a customer-oriented work culture; social hierarchies influence employees’ sense of self, identities, and social relations. Particularly, pecuniary emotional labor causes burnout (Bolton and Boyd, 2003; Erickson and Ritter, 2001) and emotional dissonance is a leading stress factor (Lewig and Dollard, 2003). While performing emotional labor does not automatically stress the employees, empirical studies reveal that emotional dissonance decreases workers’ satisfaction (Özkan, 2013), and that suppressing negative emotions on a regular basis harms workers’ well-being (Grandey, 2000).

Emotional labor is often ignored as a form of labor because of the dichotomy between emotion and thought. In Western philosophical tradition, thought is associated with rationality, and emotion with irrationality; thus, women, being associated with emotion, were deemed irrational and their demands less valuable (Lutz, 1986). This dichotomy also supports the presumption that women naturally regulate their emotions better, are more attentive to others’ feelings and perform front line service jobs better due to their ‘natural’ kindness and patience (D’Cruz and Noronha, 2008; Gray, 2010; Hochschild, 1983; Mirchandani, 2005). The display of emotions is also highly gendered: for instance, women’s anger is often invalidated (Hochschild, 1983), whereas men’s anger is normalized and justified (Lutz, 1986). Studies on specific occupations also reveal the gendered expectations of emotional labor (Cottingham et al., 2015; El-Alayli et al., 2018).

Contemporary work culture prioritizes emotional intelligence and soft skills in both the private and public sectors. Kindness, empathy, and flexibility, which have been attributed to femininity, are now highly sought-after qualities in contemporary work organizations (Özkaplan, 2015). Interestingly when men display such characteristics they are recognized as skills, while women’s emotional labor is regarded as their natural quality and remains invisible (Gray, 2010; Kelan, 2008).

Call center business is particularly characterized by the significance of emotional labor (Buchanan and Koch-Schulte, 2000; Cho et al., 2019; Holman et al., 2002; Lewig and Dollard, 2003), of communication skills² (Buchanan and Koch-Schulte, 2000; Holtgrewe and Kerst, 2002), concentration of young female workers (Belt, 2017; Cho et al., 2019) and outsourcing to companies located in other countries, creating racialized hierarchies (Mirchandani, 2005; Nath, 2011). The scripted nature of interactions and the demand for routinization of conduct (polite and professional) may benefit the workers by establishing certain feeling rules (Leidner, 1999) however the intense workload (Cho et al., 2019), being monitored (Holman et al., 2002) and emotional dissonance (Lewig and Dollard, 2003) cause stress and burnout.

Call center work requires flexibility of the workers, yet the institutional context is also important (Holtgrewe and Kerst, 2002). This is especially visible in the pessimistic findings related to Turkish call center workers’ perceptions of their working conditions (Çelik and Öz, 2011; Keser, 2006; Köse and Güllüpınar, 2022). Intense workload, long hours, low pay, and no prospect of promotion decrease job satisfaction and increase turnout (Çelik and Öz, 2011). In addition, women face a bigger risk of facing mobbing in call centers (Köse and Güllüpınar, 2022).

Although different aspects of call center work have been explored in the literature, the dynamic aspects of gender did not receive sufficient attention except for the works of Mirchandani (2005), Patel (2010) and Matos (2014) who focused on racialization of gender norms, recodification of women’s surveillance in the night shift in Indian call centers and gender relations in Portuguese call centers that are commodified for customer satisfaction respectively. It is my intention here to fill this gap and explore the practices of doing and undoing gender as part of displaying emotional labor in Turkish call centers.

Gender as performance is a useful to approach to understand the interactive nature of emotional labor in call centers. Gender is not a static category about who we are: it is performative and dynamic. West and Zimmerman (1987) conceptualized ‘doing gender’, aiming to underline its dynamic and performative aspect. They used the concept when referring to ‘a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine ‘natures’’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987: 126). When Butler (2004) argued that gender performance is not automatic and that one does not do their gender on their own, she also resolved the tension between the interactive aspect of doing gender and its more permanent aspects that are beyond individuals. She argued ‘one is always “doing” with or for another, even if the other is only imaginary’ (Butler, 2004: 1).

While the performative approach to gender has been helpful to overcoming the binary, it has been criticized for collapsing the actions of both conforming and resisting into the same term. It has been criticized for rendering resistance invisible (Deutsch, 2007) and for creating a tautology where every action could be interpreted as some form of doing gender (Risman, 2009). From this criticism emerged the concept of ‘undoing gender’, which denotes the ‘social interactions that reduce gender difference’ (Deutsch, 2007: 122). Choosing occupations that are traditionally associated with the opposite gender, following egalitarian practices of childrearing, sharing household chores, women displaying assertive behavior, and men displaying caring and empathetic behavior are examples of undoing gender. Instead of categorizing social behavior that challenges gender norms as new femininities and masculinities, these acts can be conceptualized as ‘undoing gender’ as the old gender norms lose their currency (Risman, 2009).

Gender performance also concern masculinities within a particular social and cultural sphere (Wetherell and Edley, 1999). The plural notion of ‘masculinities’ implies that there is more than one way of identifying as male and that gender is not static. The concept of hegemonic masculinity contributes to the recognition of multiple masculinities as well as of the relations of alliance, dominance, and subordination between these masculinities (Connell, 1995). Although it refers to a small group of men, it refers to the normative male ideal and is sufficiently powerful to set norms that affect other men as well as women. In Turkish society, hegemonic masculinity is associated with the norms of breadwinning responsibilities, heterosexuality, being able-bodied (Sancar, 2011); honesty, courage, stamina, strength, sexual appetite, and protecting the (sexual) honor of the family (Bozok, 2011).

The term has been criticized for being too vague and for essentializing the category of ‘man’; however, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) defended it by arguing that masculinities are a set of practices, and their fundamental feature is plurality and the hierarchy between different masculinities, while they rejected a single pattern of global male dominance. As such, the term is helpful in analyzing the power relations between men.

Approaching gender as performance that is influenced by the norms relating to femininity and masculinity helps us untangle the different strategies used by call center workers. By using the lens of doing and undoing gender, it is possible to grasp an elaborate dynamic of emotional labor. The discourses on gender in the qualitative interviews illuminate the gaps between individual behavior and their social roots.

Methodology

This research is based on a qualitative study conducted in Istanbul from June to December 2019 which included 16 semi-structured interviews. 15 call center employees (13 agents and two team leaders) and one IT worker who also worked at a call center were interviewed face to face. Six of the interviewees were male and 10 were female. The research participants’ ages ranged between 21 and 42, with a mean of 29.6, reflecting the concentration of young people in this line of work. The research participants were employed in various sectors: local municipalities (2), a university (3), IT (1), GSM operators (4), finance (3), and retail (3). The snowball sampling technique was used when recruiting the research participants from different social networks. In the sampling process, personal relations as well as social media posts were used which allowed for a more varied sample that would reflect various viewpoints and experiences of working in a call center. I reached 15 research participants through friends and acquaintances that knew people who worked in call centers. I reached one participant through contact with the Communication-Work Union (İletişim-İş). After informing the participants about the research aims, their consent was gained, and pseudonyms have been used to protect their anonymity in the presentation of the data.

I conducted qualitative interviews to grasp the various aspects of call center work such as in-job training, work process, the emotions that are felt, displayed, and suppressed by the employees, the influence of gender on the social interactions at work, and finally their views on automation in the call center business. Questions were aimed to cover the work process such as entry to the job, the content of their in-job training, the emotions they felt when interacting with clients, the overall emotions about their jobs, how being a man/woman affects their interactions on the phone, and how the client’s gender affect the interactions.

While some of the interviews took place in coffee shops, some were conducted in the workplaces, so I was able to see the work environment. Because of their workload the interview partners had to go back to work right after our interview was over. I could briefly observe this environment from the outside the glass windows; however, I was not allowed to be in the call center rooms as this would distract the operators. During data collection, I have seen four workplaces: one of them was a crowded and noisy classroom turned into a temporary call center for the registration week. The second was a large hall with nearly 30 people; there were no windows in the hall but right outside there was a social space for breaks. The third was a smaller call center; fewer employees worked there, so the space per worker was more favorable. There was also a quiet break room with video games, comfortable chairs and a small communal kitchen with free soft drinks and snacks. The forth one was a single room with 4–5 operators working within a large company. As they were only doing calls only for that company, they were not constantly busy.

The interviews were analyzed using discourse analysis, which allows examining how knowledge is produced and articulated in a specific way and make sense of social action (Fairclough, 2003; Spencer et al., 2003: 200). First, I used computer-assisted software to identify key themes such as the overall working conditions, the emotions that the research participants regularly deal with, and their coping strategies. Second, I focused on specific discourses that reflect how the employees make sense of emotional labor and gender at work. Discourse is individuals’ practice of filling reality with meaning (Ruiz, 2009), and how they see the different facades of the world with their ideas, emotions, beliefs, and mental order of social life (Fairclough, 2003: 124). This analysis is conducted in three steps: first, in the textual analysis, I explored what the discourse says, then conducted contextual analysis in which I focused on what the discourse does or what is done with it. Finally, there is sociological analysis, where I looked at discourse as knowledge, ideology, or social product (Ruiz, 2009).

The codes emerged from both the interview guide and research participants’ accounts. I began the analysis with the frequencies of phrases and themes that occurred in the texts often. I then explored the contexts in which these were uttered and what the discourses did. Certain generalizations emerged as discourses that shape the research participants’ understanding of the world and explain how they perform gender within that social frame.

Findings

Working conditions

Call center agents’ working conditions vary depending on the workplace and sector. Generally, they work 45 hours per week and occasionally have night or weekend shifts. The frequency of in-bound and out-bound calls changes seasonally or with specific campaigns. All respondents reported having completed a brief in-job training which comprised communication skills and strategies, phrases to be used/avoided, and information about the products or services that they provide.

The agents usually worked for a minimum wage and the team leaders earned more. 12 research participants stated that they earn between 2000 and 2999³ TL, one person between 3000 and 3999 TL, one between 4000 and 4999 TL, one person earned above 5000 TL, and one refused to answer. The experience of the workers ranged between 1 and 20 years with a mean of 3.6. Most had experience of 2 years or less in the sector.

There is an unequal relationship between the agent who works with a script and a set of phrases to be used and avoided and the customer who is free. The agent may only hang up when insulted by the customer. The work involves multitasking: a warm greeting, managing the voice, suppressing negative emotions, providing information correctly and timely, conducting operations online, and leaving the customers with positive feelings. So, the agents provide both mental and emotional labor on the phone.

The research participants stated that they most often felt tenseness, burnout, and positive/neutral feelings during the job processes. These were all asked with open-ended questions not to lead them. The respondents who expressed that they are not too stressed by the job also reported that they occasionally felt angry or bored. The others argued that they experience extremely high levels of burnout because of dealing with problematic customers. All respondents expressed that they follow a script, which they interpreted as a form of suppression. More intense suppression of feelings involved anger and pity, which cause burnout in the long run.

Women predominate the sector, both globally and in Turkey. The official conditions of work are generally the same for male and female workers,⁴ and the promotion opportunities are based on objective criteria such as performance scores, customer satisfaction, and team leaders’ reports. As the respondents explained getting a promotion is based on objective criteria such as meeting the targets, speaking quality, and customer ratings.

Despite gender neutrality on the official discourse level, the fear of sexual harassment may indirectly influence promotions. Firdevs was the most experienced research participant with 20 years of experience in several call centers. Currently working as a team leader in a GSM company, Firdevs explained that employees who worked face-to-face with customers were more likely to be promoted and the company generally sent their male employees to the field while the female employees worked in the offices. She said:

For example, a woman has a field visit, unfortunately men’s point of view hasn’t changed, and they approach with different intentions like sexuality or such. They say ‘convince me, let’s go out for lunch, let’s have tea and I give you the right to my phone lines’ type of thing. So, I think it is better for men to be (in the field). (Int 12, F)

Most research participants mentioned either having experienced verbal harassment from male customers or they reported that they had heard female agents experience such incidents. Sonay, who is working on a university hotline, argued that men are more polite to women on the phone, but there is a thin line between politeness and flirting:

They don’t know you. They imply things based on your voice. They shape their sentences in a certain way.

Do they try to flirt?

Yes, they do. This is a different thing, I can say. I didn’t encounter that a lot, maybe one or two times. I didn’t care much because I was aware they were just kidding. (Int 3, F)

As the above examples reveal, despite the official discourse of gender neutrality, the interactions in the service sector are gendered and being affected by the cultural norms and gender stereotypes. Below, I will discuss the ways in which agents deal with these by doing and undoing gender in various work situations.

Performing gender in call centers

Despite the claim of gender neutrality and professionalism, gender is at the heart of work organizations (Acker, 1990). In call centers, agents and customers interact with one another through voice; they assume the gender identity on the phone through voices and first names. Both the agents’ and customers’ gender matters, because their prior notions of gender norms and stereotypes impact their interactions. As Kelan (2008) argued, for most people gender binary is still a strong mental construct. The interview material shows that the agents’ gender influences the interactions at work. Only a few argued that professionalism comes first, and that gender is irrelevant, yet even these research participants discussed certain communication patterns related to gender. Participants perform different strategies of coping with the job demands without necessarily calling these gendered ways of communication and which I categorized as doing and undoing gender.

The interactions in call centers are more complex than traditional gender stereotypes. The participants gave several responses about the relationship between the customers’ gender and their communication styles, showing the diversity of how they do and undo gender. Their discourses on men and women reflect the broader social and cultural context where women are associated with kindness and men with assertiveness. Most participants argued that female customers were detail-oriented and kind, while male customers were more direct and assertive. These assumptions and observations reflect a sociality beyond the individuals; due to having more power, male customers are generally more demanding, use direct forms of communication, and at times are more violent than female customers.

As a result of intersecting identities, people occupy different power positions based on their class, gender, education level, cultural background, and age (Collins, 2015). There is power inequality between the call center workers and the customers: while the customer is free, the workers are bound by communication patterns. This power inequality coupled with the normalization of male anger explains the male customers’ aggressiveness, sense of entitlement, and use of foul language on the phone.

The research participants state that there are some differences between men’s and women’s communication styles. Sezin is selling pension schemes in an insurance company and she has mostly middle- and upper-class customers. She argued that the customers’ communication styles differ by gender:

Women are more naïve, but they prolong the conversations, never reaching a conclusion. Men are to the point and more inclined to violence and swearing. Well since our sector is finance . . . In the GSM sector you pay 20 Liras and become a customer but here you have to pay a certain amount of money. It is a different segment of customers. But, generally speaking, when I think of the problematic customers, the men are to the point and tough; the women are (speaking) long, shrew. In that sense, it is different. (Int 8, F)

Refraining from swearing at women also emerges as a form of enacting masculinity, which is framed in cultural codes about gender. Female participants mentioned that they receive calls from male customers who ask to be directed to a male agent so they can use faul language. Men who socialize in public spaces with other men and regard swearing as a legitimate form of self-expression are more comfortable interacting with other men (Bozok, 2011). Also as Wetherell and Edley (1999) argued, in some social contexts being masculine means avoiding behaviors associated with local/toxic masculinities such as cursing a woman. This allows one to position oneself discursively as ‘not that kind of man who curses a woman’. Sezin describes her experience with such customers:

When you are a woman [agent], the male customer does not swear at you. I mean it is very rare. But when you are a man, the male customer can be tougher on you. ‘Put me on to a male agent’ (they say). First, I did not understand why. The man was angry, and I kept asking why? ‘I will swear at him, I don’t want to you swear at you’ [he says]. (Interview 8, F)

Such anecdotes are very common, as my participants from different sectors reported similar experiences. Deniz, who worked in the GSM sector and has been active in a labor union, explained these in terms of cultural codes. He discusses this pattern with the customers’ gender codes and masculine ethics:

Is there a difference between men and women in terms of swearing?

Well, we all experience it. Maybe slightly less for women, the so called masculine morality system may be at work. But other than that . . .

Like they swear less to female agents?

Yes, it is something caused by masculine morality.

And the gender of the person who swears?

Mostly men. When men talk, it is something they learned socially. They may be swearing as a part of daily conversation [. . .] These dialogues are different with women. (Int 11, M)

The socio-cultural context of male aggression and power inequality between the two sides of the phone call impels the agents to use various strategies to deal with these clients. The agents try different strategies in order to meet the job demands in terms of reaching both qualitative (high customer ratings) and quantitative (increasing sales) goals. Gender-specific qualities and information can be an example of this strategy to increase sales. Deniz explains how agents use their personal interests to increase their sales of TV packages:

Do the employers assume men and women are inclined to certain areas?

It is beyond the employers. You begin to form a discourse that is closest to you because of the pressure to sell. You have knowledge about sports? Then you build dialogues based on that. If you have knowledge about children, soap operas, you build your dialogues based on these. (Int 11, M)

There is a strong discourse in the interviews on the soothing effect of female voice which coincides with the literature (Hochschild, 1983). Research participants repeatedly discussed the calming effect of female voice on the customers. They argued that female agents speaking with a confident but soft tone of voice usually manage to calm down the aggressive male customers. Duygu, who works in retail, explains her strategy of listening patiently and using a calm tone of voice so she can handle such customers more easily:

I remain calm and listen to the customer, they are filled up with gas (she laughs), I wait for them to release that gas first. I wait, I listen, I do not interrupt. I say ‘I understand, we are trying to help, that’s why we are here’ with a calm voice, because the tone of voice is very important. Depending on your tone of voice, the customer either calms down or gets more tense [. . .] We adjust our voice. The customer may interrupt you. We listen. But, of course, if they linger for a long time, if it takes longer than 3 minutes, I ask for permission ‘may I interrupt you?’ and say what I am going to say. (Int. 16, F)

The agents display traditional feminine qualities of listening, politeness (asking for permission before interrupting), and helpfulness to handle the customers. In a work culture of customer is always right, female agents accept the situation and calm down the clients by adjusting their voices. As we see in the above example, using a soothing voice and listening are examples of doing gender. Yet, in some cases, it becomes necessary to get more assertive with the clients both for meeting the job demands and for personal well-being of the agents. For female agents, it is crucial to sound confident so that they will not be pacified in the phone calls. Through assertive and competent behavior, these women aim to avoid being dominated by customers. Nilay, who worked in a local municipality, describes the emotional state she aims to elicit in the customers:

That you know what you do, that you know it the best. You really have to make them feel this. If you mumble, the other person will dominate you. And the tone of voice . . . You need to, well . . . Let’s say they are yelling, if your voice is low, the person will oppress you. I understood this. So, to convince them, we need to explain at the same level. We need to make them feel that their problem will be solved. (Int 1, F)

Other female participants also discuss the importance of sounding confident and professional. Emine, who works in a local municipality’s hotline explains the strategy of adjusting her voice that she learned in the job training:

Well, if the person on the phone is yelling all the time, I raise my voice a little, then I lower it. As we lower our voice, the client does too. The point is to get to the same level first, then we lower and they lower (the tone of voice). Not yelling at them but getting close to them. (Int 2, female)

Being good at the job also gives a sense of accomplishment and success. Other strategies include saying the name of the person, gaining their trust, providing information, and solving a situation. Sonay, who worked at a university hotline, discussed the importance of gaining confidence speaking on the phone; after gaining more experience, she feels better about her job. She explains how she felt when she had to listen to her own voice in the job training:

At first I was very shy; I didn’t want to hear my own voice. I used to tell them (the trainers) to listen with headphones and that nobody else should listen. But now as my knowledge has increased, I have more confidence. I took many calls and now I am more sure of what I say. Because I am sure of what I say, everyone can listen. (Int 3, female)

Male agents are also aware of gender dynamics when displaying and suppressing certain emotions. Men are also expected to be pleasant and flexible in frontline jobs (Özkaplan and Öztan, 2016). As Hochschild (1983) demonstrated, the service worker either elevates the customer’s status by being polite and attentive or takes the upper hand by being assertive and direct. Depending on the type of service, different feeling rules apply, reflecting the complex power dynamics of emotional labor. For instance, debt collectors may often feel stuck between feelings of pity for the customers and the need to suppress this (Hochschild, 1983). Kaya, who works in the debt collection department of a GSM company, reported feeling sorry for some of his customers, and that he uses his tone of voice according to the customer’s gender:

Well, there is of course some difference. For example, I speak a bit more softly with women. If it’s a female customer I try to help. If it’s a male customer I suppress my voice. There is difference in terms of male and female customers. I speak more politely with a woman. If I’m speaking with a man, I make my voice deeper and more confident. (Int 13, M).

Thus, speaking politely to a woman does not threaten his masculine identity; on the contrary, he confirms his masculinity by being a gentleman. Yet, the interactions with male customers are more complicated and he uses the only tool that can be perceived by the customers, a deep and confident voice, to perform masculinity. Moreover, automation allows employees to see if a customer has called before and if there was an incident with the customer such as swearing or insulting. Kaya explains:

All those things appear on the screen. For example, ‘the debtor began to swear or insulted the agent’. When I see this, I fear a bit because, apparently, he is a troublesome customer. As I said before, I begin (the conversation) by asking ‘how are you?’ When you begin by asking how they are doing, by motivating them and caressing their souls, the customer speaks politely’. (Int 13, M)

I find that when men are supposed to undo gender by being empathetic to angry customers and having to stay calm despite hearing insults, they frame their experience of emotional labor as a form of success (problem-solving, being good at their job, transforming the client’s behavior) as showing competence and agency, which are characteristics associated with masculinity. A similar response came from Hayri, who works as a team leader in an insurance company. He occasionally takes calls when there is a problem or when the client wants to talk to someone in charge. He explains throughout the interview that he is a naturally calm person and does not get affected by difficult people on the phone. He constructs empathizing with the customers not as losing power but as a form of success:

So when you face a difficult situation . . . Or maybe you don’t face such situations that much?

No, I do face difficult situations because I take the call when there is an agent who has a difficulty and cannot solve it.

How do you cope?

As I said, because I empathize and I don’t take it personally, I tell them whatever we can do as a company. I like to make the client wait a little, so they calm down. Afterwards when I take the call, they are much softer. Also, when they hear a second voice, they see that person as someone that has more authority and regard them differently. Therefore, I don’t have much trouble.

Call center agents perform a variety of communication styles that help them handle the job demands and these can be classified as feminine or masculine. While undoing gender on a regular basis may leave men at a disadvantage, it is much more preferable for women to undo gender and adopt ‘masculine’ traits such as confidence and competence as this elevates their position in the interactions. By displaying confidence and eliciting trust in the other person, female agents manage to provide the service as well as protect themselves from being negatively affected by emotional exhaustion and job stress. Men, on the other hand, when they have to undo gender by being empathetic to the client, construct this as their success rather than a threat to their masculinity.

Conclusion

Jobs in the service sector require the management and display of emotions and have been gendered (Gray, 2010; Hochschild, 1983; Kelan, 2008). Despite a prevalent discourse of ‘professionalism comes first’ and a formal equality of gender in the workplace, the service sector is feminized and emotional labor is associated with women. Moreover, the motto ‘customer is always right’, perpetuates the subordination of the service sector workers and normalizes male anger (Lutz, 1986).

Call center agents place themselves and the customers discursively in a gender order, holding certain assumptions about men and women and having strategies to manage them. In addition, the intersections of social categories such as gender and class place us differently in a matrix of power relations (Collins, 2015; Dahl et al., 2018). The prevalent discourses on gender foster certain short cuts in determining which strategy works best in a given situation, while the intersections complicate these strategies. The discourse of the female voice’s soothing power on angry male customers is prevalent, perpetuating women’s social position as caregivers and denying them the right to be angry. While male customers’ anger is normalized, male agents need to suppress their anger due to unequal power relations and job demands.

When angry male customers demand to speak with a male agent (to be able to use foul language freely), male agents deal with it by being kind and empathetic and not taking things personally, which is a form of undoing gender for them. Thus, male-to-male interactions highlight the tension between the demands of work (providing emotional labor) and hegemonic masculinity. In such situations, they construct this as a form of success. Undoing gender by being assertive can be empowering for the female employees while undoing gender by elevating the customer’s social position can be more challenging for male employees.

The gender performances are influenced by the cultural context, but they can also be flexible according to the job requirements. Female agents can undo gender more easily by displaying agency and competence, which is traditionally associated with masculinity, but still socially acceptable for women. The increasing pro-women consciousness in Turkey, as a result of the feminist influence of the last 30 years (Parmaksız, 2019), allows many women to embrace strategies of challenging conventional gender norms in social life without necessarily identifying with feminism. The changing gender norms for young women toward embracing agency and competence (Özkan and Lajunen, 2005) make it easier for women to adopt more confident work personas and be sensitive toward the danger of being suppressed by men.

My contribution in this study is to demonstrate that gender is a fluid phenomenon and is enacted in constant performances in relation to broader social categories and norms within Turkish culture. The strength of this article comes from not treating gender as a static variable that affects emotional labor in a single direction but from showing that undoing gender and challenging norms is also a possibility, and at times a requirement, to perform emotional labor. As Bericat (2016) demonstrated, sociology of emotions has a great potential for explaining social phenomena and there is a need for integrating theory and empirical research to develop this field. My research contributes to the literature by providing insight about gender performance in emotional labor from a context with traditional gender norms that are in transition. This may also help to identify the problems and develop strategies for empowering the workers.

There are more permanent aspects of gender embedded in culture and history yet on a personal or interactional level our actions either perpetuate or challenge these aspects. As Deutsch (2007) put it, ‘even when structural conditions produce gender difference and inequality, these are mediated through social interactions that always contain the potential for resistance’ (p. 108).

The concept of undoing gender is particularly important in addressing the complexity of social interactions in call centers because both men and women challenge the established gender norms. Men do this by displaying patience and politeness while women do so by being assertive. By focusing on performances in social interactions, I do not mean to treat gender as a merely personal issue. As Lorber (2018) argues, treating gender as a personal identity ignores the role of state gender regimes and of the legal impositions on binary categories, and further ignores the norms and expectations that validate personal gender identities (p. 192). By defining the ways in which people do and undo gender, we can see the intersections of different power positions and how people discursively place themselves within these. Gender in a work context is far from being a personal issue, and the personal performances of gender always refer to social structures and norms on a larger scale.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers and my dear friend and colleague Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm for their helpful comments.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ayşegül Akdemir

Notes

Author biography

Ayşegül Akdemir is an assistant professor of sociology at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul. Her research focuses on social identity, gender and emotional labor. She is particularly interested in the social construction of emotions in the work context in relation to productivity discourse.

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