Status Shield

Abstract

Arlie Hochschild coined the term “status shield” in her influential book, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling , to describe how status serves to protect individuals from the “displaced feelings of others” (Hochschild 1983: 163). To articulate this concept, Hochschild cited the experiences of flight attendants in relation to upset travelers. She argues that male flight attendants, because of their relatively greater social status as men, were shielded from passengers’ anger and frustration in ways that their female colleagues were not. As a result, the female flight attendants found themselves to be “easier targets” (1983: 163) and “the complaint department, the ones to whom dissatisfaction is fearlessly expressed” (1983: 181). Hochschild also argues that this phenomenon is not exclusive to gender: “persons in low‐status categories – women, people of color, children – lack a status shield against poorer treatment of their feelings” (1983: 174).