The Art of Pacifying an Aggressive Client: ‘Feminine’ Skills and Preventing Violence in Caring Work

Abstract

This article explores the complex interconnection between gender and emotion in the context of client-perpetrated violence at work, focusing on interviews with and writings by Finnish nurses and social workers to discuss the 'feminine' emotional skills that are supposed to prevent violence. The social formation of these skills is analysed with the concept 'emotional habitus': emotional skills derive from the socially acquired disposition to manage emotions according to the gendered values of caring work. Emotional habitus, based on the internalized, second-nature sense of emotional management, is shown to both persuade and enable employees to use emotional skills as assets for negotiating violence. This article discusses the potentiality for active agency enabled by skilful emotional management in violence prevention, bearing in mind the gender inequalities and internal contradictions connected to the social formation and practice of those skills.

‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

“…In this way, they drew on interpersonal skills and emotional labour to retreat from the encounter without aggravating the customer, or rather by pacifying the customer. Previous research has documented the emotional labour employees use to pacify violent customers, highlighting the gendered nature of this interaction (Baines, 2004; Baines and Cunningham, ; Virkki, ). This research has also found that the interpersonal skills that employees use are often developed tacitly by watching colleagues or through repeated experience (Virkki, ).…”

Key components of de‐escalation techniques: A thematic synthesis

“…2005; Ryan & Bowers 2005), but there were also studies conducted in Sweden (Carlsson et al . 2000) and Finland (Virkki 2008). Table 2 provides a summary of the major findings of each study.…”

“…They express genuine concern for the patient, appear non‐threatening and have a permissive, non‐authoritarian manner (Carlsson et al . 2000; Duperouzel 2008; Gertz 1980; Johnson & Hauser 2001; Lane 1986, Virkki 2008). These qualities help to gain the patient's trust, making appeals for self‐control more likely to be accepted (Duperouzel 2008; Lowe 1992).…”

Sexual Harassment of Women Working as Room Attendants within 5‐Star Hotels

“…As indicated in the examples given, room attendants as front‐line service employees are expected to have competencies in ‘sophisticated social intelligence’ so as to deter the guest without giving offence (Harris, , p. 146). Some employees, frequently the older ones, deployed humour to deal with and pacify difficult customers, thus reproducing the gendered attributes of subordination (Virkki, ). In this way the socio‐cultural model within attendants' workplaces enabled sexual harassment to operate as a mechanism to maintain male dominance (Bedford and Hwang, ; O'Hare and O'Donohue, ).…”