“Getting stuck in”: body work and physical capital in non-traditional occupations
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-07-2021-0296 |
| Published date | 25 August 2022 |
| Date | 25 August 2022 |
| Pages | 113-128 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Caroline Murphy,Aoife O'Meara |
“Getting stuck in”: body work
and physical capital in
non-traditional occupations
Caroline Murphy
Department of Work and Employment Studies, University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland, and
Aoife O’Meara
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Abstract
Purpose –Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of physical capital, this article explores the experiences of
male and female employees in non-traditional occupations where body work is an integral part of the role.
Specifically, the authors examine how being an underrepresented gender in this context impacts the experience
of work, including challenges faced and perceptions for future opportunities in the role.
Design/methodology/approach –The research is based on two in-depth case studies undertaken in the
social care and security/door work sector. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with male social care
workers and female security workers in the night-time hospitality sector. Management representatives were
also interviewed in each case. The interviews examined how the nature of the work in these roles impacted on
the underrepresented gender’s perceptions of various aspects of their working lives.
Findings –The findings illustrate how manyof the challenges associatedwith non-traditional occupations are
experienced differently in body work roles, either being amplified or instead presenting opportunities for the
role holder with implications for the day-to-day and longer-term experienceof work. Thefindings illustrate how
the actions and behaviour of management and colleagues can exacerbate the extent to which underrepresented
gender feel accepted within their role and organisation.
Practical implications –Organisational decision makers need to be aware of the importance of reviewing
practices regarding hiring, promotion and the allocation of tasks and duties for non-traditional role holders
engaged in body work.
Originality/value –The article contributes to understandings of “body work”and physical capital in non-
traditional occupations, illustrating how gender-based assumptions can restrict individuals in these roles to a
greater extent than in other forms of work where the body is salient to the performance of the role.
Keywords Non-traditional occupation, Body work, Physical capital
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The nature of work or is changing, including who performs work, where it occurs and how
workers experience it (Cohen, 2019). With these changes, many roles are becoming more
diverse regarding the gender performing them; however, many occupations remain deeply
segregated. The concept of “non-traditional occupation”refers to an individual being
employed within an occupation traditionally associated with the opposite gender, where they
are underrepresented numerically (Christie, 1998). Despite changes in many sectors, the
overall structure of employment remains polarised (Brinkley et al., 2013). The association
between occupational segregation and the body has long been evident, for example
Anker (1998) refers to the exclusion of women from occupations requiring physical strength
Non traditional
occupations
and body work
113
© Caroline Murphy and Aoife O’Meara. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is
published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,
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may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 5 July 2021
Revised 15 June 2022
27 July 2022
Accepted 27 July 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 44 No. 7, 2022
pp. 113-128
Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-07-2021-0296
where average strength was taken as a proxy for role suitability. More contemporaneously,
occupational segregation is strongly evident in roles associated with body work. The concept
of body work, while initially taken as referring to the work which people are expected to do on
their own bodies (Halford et al., 1997), has expanded to now include work which involves the
care, adornment, pleasure, discipline, or cure of other’s bodies (Wolkowitz, 2002). However, as
Wolkowitz et al. (2013) assert, there has been a lack of attention paid to service sector
employment involving body work. Furthermore, while the experience of individuals in “non-
traditional occupations”has been discussed in terms of stigma, prestige and motivation
(Simpson, 2004;Pruitt, 2017), there remains a dearth of research examining how physicality
and body work affect non-traditional workers experience of their work. Thus, there is a need
to deepen our understanding of worker experience in these roles. This article seeks to address
this lacuna by examining the experience of male social care workers and female security
workers (bouncers) in the night-time sector in Ireland, both of which meet the definition of
roles involving both body works. Our central research question asks how the nature of these
roles impacts non-traditional employees experience and perceptions of work. In doing so, we
develop a greater theoretical understanding of the salience of physical attributes in non-
traditional occupations, examining how this contributes to altering the experience of work for
employees in body work roles. The article is structured as follows. We begin with an overview
of the literature pertaining to physicality, body work and occupational segregation, outlining
how these different elements combine to alter the experience of work. We then provide
contextual material on the two sectors examined, before presenting an overview of our
methodological approach and findings. We conclude with a discussion of our findings,
illustrating what these mean for those in non-traditional occupations.
Physicality, physical capital and body work
Shilling (1991, p. 653) challenged the “marginal status of the body in sociology”in
understanding the production of gender and social inequalities, with implications for study of
work. Bourdieu (1978) is regarded as having strongly contributed to the sociology of the
body, mainly through his conceptualisation of embodied capital as a subset of cultural capital
that is a cultural resource invested within the body. However, Shilling (1991, p. 654) argued
that “the physical”is too important to be seen as merely as subset of cultural capital, pointing
out the importance of the body to human agency and the production of cultural capital in the
first instance. Shilling (1991) developed on Bourdieu’s notion of physical capital, capturing
the importance of the body as a form of capital in its own right. Bourdieu argued that physical
capital (in the form of body shape, gait and posture) is largely socially produced. The
production of physical capital refers to the social formation of bodies by individuals through
a range of activities (including sporting and leisure) which express a class location and are
which afforded a symbolic value (Shilling, 1991, p. 654). Physical capital can then be
converted into economic, cultural and social capital but opportunities to do so are not
equally accessible. It has also been pointed out that although beneficial in some respects,
physical capital can be limiting in several regards, for example the risks associated with it
(e.g. short length of careers reliant on physical capital). Bourdieu’s work highlights the
relationship between physical capital and social inequality, with respect to gender, for
example how viewing female bodies as weak contributed to lower social status for women.
Shilling (1991, p. 661) asserts that a poststructuralist view deviates from such naturalistic,
biological essentialism, instead focussing on meaning the body is given through language
and other forms of representation, while the dialectical view situates the body as a material
object that is subject to social change. Marx and Engels (1970) acknowledged the body as a
bearer of labour power, with the importance of the body both facilitated and limited by
cultural, political and economic developments, perhaps particularly evident as technology
ER
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