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

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