Woman, Business and Invisible Emotional Labour

When people talk about entrepreneurship, the conversation usually centres on capital, innovation, marketing, productivity and profit. Success is measured by investment secured, customers acquired, and revenue generated. Yet, beneath every thriving business lies another form of work that rarely appears on balance sheets or in annual reports: emotional labour.

Coined by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her landmark 1983 book The Managed Heart, emotional labour refers to the effort involved in managing one’s own emotions and often influencing the emotions of others as part of one’s work. Hochschild originally explored the concept among flight attendants and service workers, but over the decades it has become an important lens for understanding many professions, including entrepreneurship. For women entrepreneurs, however, emotional labour is often more than a professional skill. It becomes an everyday expectation.

Around the world, women business owners are frequently expected to be far more than strategic decision-makers. They are expected to be empathetic leaders, patient listeners, conflict mediators, mentors, caregivers, and morale builders. Research increasingly shows that this invisible work carries significant economic and personal consequences. The World Bank has consistently highlighted that unpaid care work and gendered social expectations limit women’s participation in economic activities across low- and middle-income countries. Likewise, the International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that women continue to perform substantially more unpaid care work than men worldwide, leaving them with less time, flexibility and energy to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities and leadership roles.

For many women entrepreneurs, work and family responsibilities are compounded by a third, often overlooked demand: managing the emotional well-being of employees, customers, and loved ones. The emotional costs are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Studies published in the Academy of Management Perspectives and the Journal of Business Venturing have linked high emotional demands with entrepreneurial stress, emotional exhaustion, and burnout. While resilience is rightly celebrated as an essential entrepreneurial quality, constantly regulating one’s emotions while absorbing the emotional needs of others can gradually undermine decision-making, creativity and long-term well-being.

This global reality resonates strongly in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in expanding its entrepreneurial ecosystem, with women playing an increasingly visible role across sectors such as digital commerce, fashion, handicrafts, agro-processing, food businesses, and technology. According to the SME Foundation’s analysis of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Economic Census 2024, micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) account for 99 per cent of the country’s industrial establishments, employ more than 30 million people, and contribute around 30 per cent of the national economy. Since its establishment in 2006, the SME Foundation has supported approximately 2.2 million entrepreneurs, 60 per cent of whom are women.

These numbers tell an encouraging story of women’s growing economic participation. Yet, they reveal only part of the picture. Consider a boutique owner in Dhaka. Her morning begins by calming an anxious employee worried about meeting sales targets. Later, she patiently reassures a dissatisfied customer whose order has been delayed. In the evening, after closing the shop, she returns home to help her child prepare for school while supporting elderly family members and managing household responsibilities. None of these tasks appear in a financial statement, yet each requires emotional energy, patience and resilience. Her business may close for the day, but her emotional work rarely does.

Ironically, the very qualities that make many women effective leaders can also become additional burdens. Empathy, emotional intelligence, and strong interpersonal skills are widely recognised as hallmarks of good leadership. Organisational psychologist Daniel Goleman’s research has shown that leaders who demonstrate empathy and emotional awareness build stronger teams, foster trust, and create healthier workplace cultures.

The problem arises when these qualities are treated not as valuable leadership competencies but as responsibilities that women are simply expected to perform. In many workplaces, female entrepreneurs become the default source of emotional support to keep everything running smoothly. Meanwhile, similar emotional responsibilities are far less likely to be expected of their male counterparts.

This imbalance is not simply a matter of fairness; it has economic consequences. Emotional labour consumes time, attention, and mental energy, the very resources entrepreneurs need to innovate, make strategic decisions, expand their businesses, and seize new opportunities. When emotional caregiving becomes an invisible obligation rather than a shared responsibility, it limits both individual well-being and business growth. Recognising this hidden dimension of entrepreneurship is therefore essential to building a more sustainable and inclusive economy.

If we genuinely want women-led businesses to thrive, relying on women’s endless personal resilience isn't a strategy, it’s a recipe for burnout. Real change starts with sharing the load. At home, that means partners and families stepping up so women actually have the time and mental space to think big. In the business world, it means investors, chambers and startup hubs talking openly about mental health and burnout, not just pitch decks and profit margins.

It also means shifting how we view workplace leadership. Managing team dynamics, handling conflict, and keeping morale high should not automatically default to the woman in the room. When all leaders, regardless of gender, are taught to handle the human side of business, it lifts an invisible weight off female founders.
______________________
The writer is a journalist