Emotionally Demanding Roles & Women's Mental Health: The Importance of Good Workplace Relationships

By Dr Mike Talbot

A new study [1] across 35 European countries, using data [2] from 43,850 workers, shows that women bear a hidden burden at work: they face higher emotional labour demands, and this links directly to those women’s poorer mental health.

‘Emotional Labour’ refers to employment that requires workers to control or suppress their emotions to carry out the demands of their job. Some examples might be smiling through harassment, such as a restaurant worker serving demanding and rude customers; managing distress, such as health workers maintaining a calm demeanour while managing anxious and fearful patients, or emotional maintenance: being the one expected to organise office parties, nurture office relationships, or to be the one to always apologise first.

The study found that women were much more frequently expected to engage in emotional labour, and even within the same jobs as male counterparts, they reported significantly higher emotional labour demands. But importantly, this also translated into poorer mental health amongst women: where the stress and personal depletion of engaging in emotional labour would impact on women’s psychological well-being.  

Interesting research, of course. But for dispute resolvers such as us here at EU Mediation, the stand-out part is how the negative impact of emotional work might be mitigated. It was found that, despite women experiencing higher emotional labour demands, if they benefitted from genuine social support at work, such as being part of team-based peer networks, being managed in a responsive manner, and having invisible emotional work recognised, then they would fell less stressed, less depleted after work, and so would not suffer the ill-effects of emotional work demands. 

Healthy working relationships matter. And this research reinforces what we already knew about how important it is to keep people talking so that they can build and maintain collaboration and mutual support in their workplaces: people thrive when they are listened to, recognised, supported, and acknowledged. And especially if people are under stress, relationships can so quickly deteriorate to the point of them showing increased sickness absence, presenteeism, formal workplace processes, and ultimately quitting their jobs.  

The research shows that more emotional demands are put on working women than on working men, and that this greater demand can impact their mental health. This makes it particularly important to recognise (what can actually be invisible) emotional labour, to support colleagues by fostering healthy and supportive working relationships, and to acknowledge the potential impact that more emotionally demanding roles can have.

[1] Antonakakis, N (2026). Emotional Labor Demands, Stratification, and Mental Health Pathways in Europe: Evidence from the European Working Conditions Survey. Social Science & Medicine (2026)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119202

[2] Data from the European Working Conditions Survey (2015) was re-analysed for Antonakakis’ work.