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Emotional Labor in Mathematics: Reflections on Mathematical Communities, Mentoring Structures, and EDGE

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A Celebration of the EDGE Program’s Impact on the Mathematics Community and Beyond

Part of the book series: Association for Women in Mathematics Series ((AWMS,volume 18))

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Terms such as “affective labor” and “emotional labor” pepper feminist critiques of the workplace. Though there are theoretical nuances between the two phrases, both kinds of labor involve the management of emotions; some acts associated with these constructs involve caring, listening, comforting, reassuring, and smiling. In this article I explore the different ways academic mathematicians are called to provide emotional labor in the discipline, thereby illuminating a rarely visible component of a mathematical life in the academy. Underlying this work is my contention that a conceptualization of labor involved in managing emotions is of value to the project of understanding the character, values, and boundaries of such a life. In order to investigate the various dimensions of emotional labor in the context of academic mathematics, I extend the basic framework of Morris and Feldman (Acad. Manag. Rev. 21:986–1010, 1996) and then apply this extended framework to the mathematical sciences. Other researchers have mainly focused on the negative effects of emotional labor on a laborer’s physical, emotional, and mental health, and several examples in this article align with this framing. However, at the end of the article, I argue that mathematical communities and mentoring structures such as EDGE help diminish some of the negative aspects of emotional labor while also accentuating the positives.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts both “diplomat” and “mathematician” in the “professional” category, yet the emotional labor of a diplomat is crucial to his work whereas that of a mathematician is not.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here for reference is the official job description the United States government provides: mathematicians “conduct research in fundamental mathematics or in application of mathematical techniques to science, management, and other fields,” see https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes152021.htm, last accessed on December 20, 2018.

  2. 2.

    This is not to claim that mathematicians are disembodied workers. When I had a minor shoulder injury and had visions of not being able to use the chalk board for several weeks, or during that stressful time when I lost my voice unexpectedly, I very clearly noted the physical aspects of my role in the academy.

  3. 3.

    I am by no means suggesting that this is a desirable situation; nor am I asserting that this is a choice made by individual instructors. It is often the case that certain faculty find themselves in these situations. It is my belief that nobody should be forced to do more emotional labor than they are willing to do. Unfortunately, faculty from minoritized groups often face the dilemma of either doing the extra emotional work and not being respected for it or rejecting doing the extra emotional work and then suffering the consequences of that decision.

  4. 4.

    This certainly applies to other service work, such as my editing work with Khadjavi on [23, 24] and K-12 outreach activities of various mathematicians; see, for instance, [49]. Similarly blogging and hosting other networking sites is a valuable service contribution, where most of the time people who do the needed work engage in it because of political and ethical goals. See in particular the e-Mentoring Network mentioned above as well as the inclusion/exclusion blog of the American Mathematical Society, available at https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of the volume for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this volume. I also very much appreciated their open-mindedness about the uncategorizability of my project and their input and support through the writing process. I should also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, who offered insightful feedback on the original version of this manuscript, and Brian Katz, who generously read two drafts of the paper and offered his constructive criticism. I believe that their input has much improved this paper. The imperfections that remain are of course all my responsibility; this is the best I could do at this time.

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  1. Pomona College, Department of Mathematics, Claremont, CA, USA

    Gizem Karaali

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Correspondence to Gizem Karaali .

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  1. Science Writing Advanced Academic Program, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Susan D'Agostino

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, USA

    Sarah Bryant

  3. Department of Mathematics, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

    Amy Buchmann

  4. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Belmont University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Michelle Craddock Guinn

  5. Division of Sciences and Mathematics, University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, USA

    Leona Harris

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Karaali, G. (2019). Emotional Labor in Mathematics: Reflections on Mathematical Communities, Mentoring Structures, and EDGE. In: D'Agostino, S., Bryant, S., Buchmann, A., Guinn, M., Harris, L. (eds) A Celebration of the EDGE Program’s Impact on the Mathematics Community and Beyond . Association for Women in Mathematics Series, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19486-4_12

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