Som medsyster, eller som medarbetare? : - En kvalitativ studie om emotionellt arbete i en kvinnosolidarisk ideell förening

Sammanfattning: Hochschild's study of emotional labour, how emotions are handled in wage work involving interaction with others, was the starting point for emotional labour studies. However, previous research on emotional labour in the non-profit sector is rather limited. Therefore, this study aims to inquire how emotion labour is expressed in a voluntary work carried out exclusively by women. Furthermore, the study intends to determine whether the boundary between acting professionally  and  acting  personally  tends  to  become  more  diffuse  in  voluntary  work.  The study  is  based  on  interviews  with  six  volunteers  currently  working  at  Kvinnohuset  and  the ambition  has  been  to  successfully  capture  their  experiences  about  how  emotional  labour  is managed  by  them  during  their  voluntary  work.  The  study  shows  that  the  volunteers  at Kvinnohuset work with emotional labour in a transboundary manner, which means that they commute between acting professionally and personally in order to maintain the purpose and culture   of   the   Kvinnohuset,   which   is   important   for   the   organization   to   progress   and relationships  to  flourish.  In  addition  to  this,  the  study  shows  that  the  existing  definition  of emotional   labour   does   not   correspond   to   the   emotional   labour   that   can   be   found   at Kvinnohuset.  Through  an  elaborated  model  of  similarities  and  differences  between  how emotional labour is handled in wage work and in the non-profit sector, we have proposed a more  precise  definition  of  emotional  labour  in  the  non-profit  sector,  which  is  emotional procreation.