The central finding is not that men and women are identical in their emotional capabilities. On the contrary, the data reveals genuine, measurable differences. Women and girls do score higher, on average, at recognising and understanding emotions — the abilities involved in decoding facial expressions, vocal tones and emotional situations, and in grasping what those signals mean. But the picture changes dramatically when the researchers turned to emotion regulation, the capacity to manage feelings once they arise. On tasks involving the regulation of one’s own emotions, men and boys tended to score higher. On tasks involving the regulation of other people’s emotions — soothing, encouraging, calming or motivating others — women scored higher. Emotional intelligence, in other words, is not a single dial on which one gender simply sits higher.

This decomposition is the study’s most important technical contribution. The researchers argue that emotional intelligence should be treated as four separable skills: recognition of emotions, understanding of emotions, and regulation of emotions, each directed either at oneself or at others. When the evidence is sliced this way, the sweeping generalisations that dominate popular discourse collapse. “Common assumptions about women and men’s emotional abilities are often too broad,” said Hausfeld. “The evidence points to a picture in which differences depend on the skill being examined and the context in which it is measured.” The finding that men score slightly higher on self-regulation is particularly provocative, because it inverts the usual narrative in which women are presumed to hold every emotional advantage.

Equally significant is the study’s demonstration that measurement method matters enormously. Emotional intelligence research relies on two broad families of instruments. Performance-based tests present participants with actual tasks — identifying emotions in photographs of faces, judging the most effective response to an interpersonal scenario — and score the answers for accuracy, much as an examination would. Self-report surveys, by contrast, simply ask people how emotionally skilled they believe themselves to be. The meta-analysis found that women’s advantage is substantial on performance-based tests but shrinks almost to nothing on self-reports. “Women are emotionally intelligent. Men think they are,” said Menges. “On performance-based tests, women’s advantage is substantial. On self-reports, it almost disappears. Self-perception and demonstrated ability are not the same thing.”

The gap between confidence and competence carries real scientific weight. The researchers could not determine from the available data why men rate themselves as highly as women on questionnaires while performing worse on objective tasks. “Men may overestimate their abilities, women may underestimate theirs, or both may be happening,” Menges noted. “Either way, confidence and competence are not the same, and organisations should not confuse them.” This dissociation echoes a well-known pattern in cognitive psychology, where self-assessed ability often correlates only weakly with tested performance, and where the least skilled individuals are sometimes the most confident in their own judgments. What the new study adds is evidence that this miscalibration is patterned by gender in the specific domain of emotional skills.

Because the underlying data spans nearly thirty years, the team could also track how these differences have evolved over time. Their analysis found that gender differences in overall emotional intelligence have narrowed in recent years, and that the narrowing is most pronounced among children. “That pattern is consistent with changing socialisation and gender norms, but it doesn’t establish the cause,” Menges cautioned. “Age, generation and time period cannot be separated in this data, and biological explanations cannot be ruled out.” This is a crucial methodological honesty: cross-sectional snapshots taken across decades cannot cleanly distinguish whether the shrinking gap reflects generational change, developmental shifts within individuals, or broader cultural trends. What can be said is that whatever produces the differences, it appears less entrenched in the youngest cohorts studied.

The context in which emotional abilities are exercised also shapes the size of the observed gaps. The analysis found that gender differences in emotion recognition were larger among leaders than among non-leaders — a finding that may reflect the heightened emotional demands of leadership roles or the self-selection of people with particular profiles into such positions. Counter to the researchers’ own expectations, differences were smaller in male-dominated industries than in other sectors. Geographically, the differences were largest in North and Central America and in Europe compared with the rest of the world, suggesting that whatever mix of culture, socialisation and measurement practice drives these gaps, it is not uniform across societies. Such heterogeneity is difficult to reconcile with any simple biological account and instead points toward the interplay of context and ability.

The workplace implications are where the researchers sound their sharpest warnings. Prior studies included in the analysis link high emotional intelligence to job performance, stress management, communication and conflict management — the raw material of everyday organisational life. Against that backdrop, the assumption that women simply possess more of this quality, an assumption repeated uncritically in business publications, becomes more than a harmless stereotype. “Persistent assumptions that women naturally possess greater emotional intelligence create two risks,” Menges said. “Real differences may be dismissed as unscientific. At the same time, broad claims can reinforce stereotypes and push emotional work onto women.” If employers treat emotional labour — the often invisible work of managing colleagues’ feelings — as something women do naturally, they may allocate it by default rather than by skill, without recognition, compensation or career credit.

The researchers are careful to note that small average differences should not be dismissed as trivial, even when they are modest in magnitude. Small effects can accumulate through countless everyday decisions — who is asked to comfort a distressed client, who is expected to defuse team tension, whose composure is read as leadership — and over time these accumulations can produce measurable gaps in outcomes such as promotion and advancement. The remedy they propose is procedural rather than rhetorical. “Treat it as a set of skills,” Menges advised. “Use validated performance-based measures where they exist, rather than relying on self-reports. Develop these abilities in everyone, and don’t let emotional work aimed at others become women’s responsibility by default.” In practical terms, that means organisations should assess emotional competencies with the same psychometric rigour they apply to technical skills, and should train all employees rather than assuming some arrive pre-equipped.

Ultimately, the study’s authors argue that the question that has framed decades of popular debate — do women or men have more emotional intelligence? — is simply the wrong question. “The better questions are: which ability, measured how, directed at whom, in what context?” said Menges. “That’s the direction the science is taking, and I’d advise organisations to do the same.” The meta-analysis, titled “Putting assumptions to the test: A meta-analytic review of gender differences in emotional intelligence and specific emotion abilities,” was published on 17 September 2026. Its message is unlikely to end the cultural argument overnight, but it offers something the argument has long lacked: a data-driven map of where real differences lie, where they are shrinking, and where confident belief and demonstrated skill part ways.

Subject of Research: Gender differences in emotional intelligence abilities

Article Title: Study challenges assumption that women have more emotional intelligence than men

Article References: Study challenges assumption that women have more emotional intelligence than men. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: emotional intelligence, gender differences, meta-analysis, emotion recognition, emotion regulation, self-report, performance-based tests, workplace psychology, emotional labour, University of Cambridge, Emotion journal, socialisation

The theoretical foundations of relational pedagogy run deep. The approach is grounded in the ethics of care, most famously articulated by Nel Noddings, and in dialogical philosophy, particularly Martin Buber’s distinction between I-Thou relationships—characterised by authenticity, openness, empathy, and presence—and I-It relationships, marked by detachment and objectification. It also draws on Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of responsibility to the other. Within this tradition, education is conceived as a lifelong relational process shaped through ethical encounters between persons, in which knowledge, learning, and teaching exist within a shared reality co-constructed by students and educators. The educator’s intuitive and ethical responsiveness to students’ situated experiences becomes nothing less than a moral core of pedagogy. Rather than treating students as passive recipients of transmitted content, relational pedagogy invites them to become active partners in the learning process, establishing trust, engagement, and reciprocity as the mechanisms through which understanding develops.

The empirical case for such an approach is considerable. Pedagogical relationships shape how students perceive their study environment, influence academic achievement, and have even been regarded in some research as more significant than the lecturer’s subject knowledge. Yet contemporary academic cultures—defined by workload pressures, expanding student numbers, and mounting administrative demands—often constrain lecturers’ capacity to engage relationally. Mental health and well-being problems are reported across the academic hierarchy, from early-career faculty to senior positions, reflecting widespread institutional and structural stressors. Students face parallel challenges. Recent Swedish studies indicate that final-semester students in healthcare and social work programmes reported declining sense of coherence and reduced health-promoting behaviours over time, while students across cohorts continued to report low general health and well-being. These converging trends, Lood argues, highlight an urgent need for educational environments that support meaningful relational engagement, belonging, and shared responsibility.

Occupational therapy is a particularly fertile ground for this pedagogical philosophy. The discipline’s core values—meaning-making, participation, and relationality—mirror the principles of relational pedagogy almost exactly. Students are expected to develop not only theoretical and practical knowledge but also relational capacities such as reflexivity, presence, and attuned communication, capabilities that echo the therapeutic use of self long described in clinical practice. The approach also overlaps with sociocultural learning theory, which frames learning as participatory and dialogical, and with constructivist perspectives that view learners as active agents constructing knowledge through experience and reflection. Relational pedagogy builds on these traditions by foregrounding the ethical and affective dimensions of educational encounters, positioning relational quality as a key mechanism through which students engage, participate, and ultimately learn. It resonates too with broader shifts in healthcare toward person-centred and integrated care, reinforcing the importance of cultivating relational competence before practitioners ever reach a clinic.

To explore how these ideas translate into everyday teaching, Lood conducted four individual interviews with senior lecturers at a Swedish occupational therapy programme built on student-activating pedagogy, which encourages students to actively search for knowledge and take responsibility for their own learning. The lecturers had between nine and thirty years of teaching experience, and the interview guide addressed what relational pedagogy means, views on lecturer-student relationships, relationships in an era of digitalised education, and the facilitators and barriers to human connection and dialogue in higher education. Transcripts were analysed using qualitative content analysis as described by Graneheim and Lundman, with preliminary categories refined through collegial discussion, engagement with previous literature, and reflexive notes informed by the author’s own eight years of teaching experience. The analysis yielded two central categories: learning as a co-created occupation, and relational pedagogy as a foundation for deep learning and professional development.

The first category reframes learning itself as a shared, jointly produced activity. Lecturers described relational pedagogy as an active, mutual process built on engagement, trust, and responsiveness—a deliberate shift away from traditional, authoritative teaching toward collaboration and participation. Lecturers and students share responsibility for the learning process, and outcomes emerge through dialogue rather than unilateral delivery. One lecturer summarised this reciprocity as “a giving and taking all the time,” capturing the distributed expertise and shared decision-making at the heart of the approach. In practice, this meant cultivating safe and inclusive environments by being relationally present, inviting students’ experiences into discussions, and using dialogical prompts to stimulate two-way communication. As another lecturer put it, “It concerns not just the what but the how in our work”—pedagogical content and relational quality were treated as inseparable. Importantly, this relational work extended beyond individual lecturer-student encounters to the wider relational ecology of the programme, including relationships within and between student groups and among colleagues, where shared pedagogical aims and collegial coherence reinforced collaboration and collective responsibility.

The second category connects relational teaching to deep learning and professional identity formation. Deep learning, in this framing, means the integration of theory and practice, critical reflection, and understanding that becomes personally meaningful within occupational therapy contexts. One lecturer described the shift from factual acquisition toward professional and personal becoming: “It is about getting the students to understand that it is not only about knowledge, but also about a different approach. To develop as a human being and that it is a road you travel together.” This echoes established research showing that supportive, dialogical environments promote deep approaches to learning, characterised by integrated understanding rather than superficial reproduction. Lecturers also noted that modelling relational engagement—presence, attentive listening, ethical sensitivity—positions relational competence as an integral part of becoming an occupational therapist. The benefits flowed back to educators as well: relational encounters sparked reflection on teaching values and were described as sustaining and mutually enriching, with students reportedly able to “feel when we talk to each other and have shared goals.”

Yet the study is equally clear about the forces working against relational pedagogy. Large cohorts and heavy workloads limited opportunities for dialogue and personalised engagement. Hybrid and digital learning formats weakened relational attunement, with lecturers mourning the loss of body language, informal pre- and post-class interactions, and spontaneous dialogue, and expressing uncertainty about students’ engagement when cameras stayed off. These challenges align with concerns raised by Felten and Lambert that hybrid education can intensify disconnection if relational structures are not deliberately designed. Lecturers responded experimentally, with small-group formats, guided reflection, and open online “drop-in” spaces that supported informal contact—and proved valuable on campus as well. Institutional pressures compounded the difficulty: efficiency demands, standardisation, and surveillance-oriented performance cultures reduced the time and space needed for relational teaching. The approach also exacted a personal toll, demanding emotional labour and vulnerability as lecturers balanced openness with professional boundaries and navigated group conflicts under workload pressure.

The overall conclusion is that relational pedagogy must be understood simultaneously as practice, ethos, and challenge. It can be enacted through intentional strategies—attentive listening, shared reflection, relational availability, and facilitation of peer collaboration—and it demonstrably supports deep learning and professional formation. But its sustainability depends on institutional and collegial support, because it requires time, emotional investment, and pedagogical intentionality rather than discretionary individual effort. Lood argues that higher education systems should move beyond competitive and individualistic approaches and recognise the relational dimensions of teaching and learning as central rather than peripheral. When institutions acknowledge the time, care, and emotional labour involved, lecturers can draw on their professional and experiential knowledge to treat students as credible contributors of knowledge, cultivating inclusive and collaborative learning environments that align with occupational therapy’s core values—and offering a model that other health professional disciplines, and perhaps higher education more broadly, would do well to study.

Subject of Research: The application of relational pedagogy in occupational therapy education

Article Title: On relational pedagogy in occupational therapy education: What it is and why it matters

Article References: On relational pedagogy in occupational therapy education: What it is and why it matters. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1080/11038128.2026.2613622

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1080/11038128.2026.2613622

Keywords: relational pedagogy, occupational therapy education, higher education, ethics of care, dialogical philosophy, student engagement, collaborative learning, deep learning, professional identity, digital learning, emotional labour, co-creation of knowledge

The study employed reflexive thematic analysis, a qualitative method underpinned by an experiential and contextualist orientation, meaning the researcher explicitly sought to understand participants’ own meanings while acknowledging that those meanings are shaped by social and organisational context. Semi-structured individual interviews, each lasting between 30 and 40 minutes, were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants before data collection, and the study received ethics approval from the ethics committee of the King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, with procedures conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Analysis proceeded through six phases and generated four overarching themes, each capturing a different facet of how occupational stress is felt, absorbed and resisted in daily nursing practice.

The first theme, which the author describes as carrying the hidden weight of caring, captures the cumulative psychological strain that arises from repeated exposure to patient suffering and loss. Nurses described an emotional burden that is largely invisible to outsiders and often unacknowledged within the workplace itself. Unlike physical workload, which can at least be counted in hours and tasks, this weight accumulates quietly: the death of a patient the nurse had cared for over weeks, the distress of families, the moments of suffering witnessed but rarely processed. Because professional norms demand composure, nurses frequently carry this burden silently, and the study suggests that this invisibility is itself a pathway through which stress becomes overwhelming. Emotional labour, performed continuously under pressure to appear calm and capable, remains unrecognised in workload calculations and staffing decisions.

The second theme, running without pause: the erosion of recovery, shifts attention from emotional content to temporal structure. Nurses described excessive demands, relentless time pressure and a persistent fear of error, all compressed into shifts with little opportunity for psychological recovery between back-to-back tasks. Importantly, the analysis found that these experiences varied according to three conditions: nurses’ sense of control over prioritisation, the quality of collegial relationships within their unit, and whether the organisational environment acknowledged the demands placed on staff. Where nurses felt empowered to triage and prioritise, and where colleagues supported one another, the same objective workload felt more survivable. Where control was absent and demands went unacknowledged, the compression of recovery time between competing tasks became a defining source of strain. This finding aligns with established occupational health psychology models in which job control and social support buffer the health effects of high demands.

The third theme, when work refuses to stay at work, documents the spillover of occupational stress into home life. Participants described sleep disruption, emotional depletion and difficulty disengaging from the events of their shifts once they left the hospital. The boundary between professional and personal life, never firm in a profession built on human connection, dissolved under sustained pressure. Nurses reported carrying worry about patients into their evenings, lying awake replaying clinical decisions, and arriving at the next shift without having genuinely recovered. Chronic partial recovery of this kind is a recognised precursor of exhaustion and burnout, and the study’s experiential account gives texture to what quantitative research has long correlated: that insufficient recovery time is not a peripheral inconvenience but a central mechanism linking occupational stress to deteriorating wellbeing.

The fourth theme, the fragile persistence of caring, may be the most consequential for patient outcomes. Despite structural constraints that pushed care toward task completion and documentation, nurses described a sustained commitment to relational, person-centred care. They actively worked to preserve small acts of humanism: sitting with a frightened patient, explaining a procedure in plain language, noticing the person behind the diagnosis. Yet the analysis identified a tension at the heart of this commitment, because administrative tasks increasingly displaced the relational work that drew many nurses into the profession. The study describes this displacement as one of three experiential pathways through which stress becomes overwhelming, alongside the compression of recovery time and the invisibility of emotional labour. When the caring core of the role is crowded out, nurses experience not only fatigue but a form of moral strain, a gap between the care they believe patients deserve and the care the system allows them to give.

What distinguishes this study from much of the existing literature is its methodological stance. Quantitative studies have documented robust associations between occupational stress, wellbeing and caring behaviours, but they cannot easily capture how nurses themselves narrate those relationships. By adopting reflexive thematic analysis with an experiential orientation, the research integrates and refines experiential processes described in prior qualitative work, offering an interpretive account rather than a statistical one. The three pathways identified, compressed recovery, displacement of relational care and invisible emotional labour, function as a conceptual map for understanding how ordinary working conditions accumulate into extraordinary psychological cost. They also explain why individual-level resilience training, however popular with administrators, addresses only part of the problem: a nurse cannot schedule her way out of a system that provides no recovery time, and she cannot cope her way out of documentation demands that crowd out patient contact.

The study’s conclusions are pointed on this question of responsibility. Occupational stress in nursing, the author argues, requires systemic action at the unit and organisational levels rather than reliance on individual coping alone. The findings imply concrete levers: protecting recovery time within shift design, giving nurses genuine control over prioritisation, investing in collegial support structures within units, recognising emotional labour in workload planning, and ensuring that organisational leadership acknowledges rather than ignores the demands placed on staff. Each of these levers corresponds to a condition identified in the analysis as shaping whether stress felt manageable or overwhelming. In other words, the study does not merely describe distress; it identifies the environmental conditions that modulate it, providing a template for intervention that is grounded in nurses’ own accounts.

For the nursing profession, the implications extend to patient safety and care quality. The fragile persistence of caring suggests that person-centred practice survives under pressure, but only through effort, and effort is a depletable resource. If stress continues to erode wellbeing, the relational dimension of care is likely to be the first casualty, with consequences for patient experience, trust and potentially clinical outcomes. Conversely, the study suggests that improving nurses’ working conditions is not merely an employee-benefit issue but a care-quality intervention. Health systems seeking to retain staff and protect standards may find in these findings a reminder that the wellbeing of the workforce and the quality of care it delivers are two faces of the same phenomenon.

Published open access in BMC Nursing, the study adds a carefully grounded qualitative voice to a debate often dominated by large-scale survey data. Its single-hospital sample of 15 nurses means the findings are interpretive rather than generalisable in a statistical sense, but that is precisely the point: the research aims to illuminate mechanisms and meanings that numbers alone cannot reach. As health systems confront a global crisis in nursing retention and wellbeing, the message from the bedside is unambiguous. Nurses are not asking to become immune to the emotional demands of their work, which many regard as inseparable from its meaning. They are asking for working environments that acknowledge the weight they carry, protect the time they need to recover, and safeguard the space in which genuine caring can take place. The research suggests that meeting those conditions is not only possible but essential, and that the responsibility for doing so rests with organisations, not with nurses alone.

Subject of Research: Nurses' lived experiences of occupational stress and its effects on wellbeing and caring practices

Article Title: Nurses’ experiences of occupational stress and its influence on their wellbeing and caring practices

Article References: Althewini, A. (2026). Nurses’ experiences of occupational stress and its influence on their wellbeing and caring practices. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05376-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05376-3

Keywords: occupational stress, nurses, nurse wellbeing, caring behaviours, reflexive thematic analysis, qualitative research, burnout, emotional labour, person-centred care, nursing workforce, recovery time, organisational support

Researchers Nuria Cordero-Ramos and Macarena Hernández-Ramírez of Pablo de Olavide University in Seville carried out fieldwork between October 2022 and November 2024 in a village they call Monte Verde, a pseudonym protecting the community’s identity. Women make up just over 55 percent of its population, and dense kinship networks centered on four or five families shape its social and economic life. The researchers combined participant observation, 37 recorded in-depth interviews averaging 90 minutes, informal conversations, two discussion groups, and two training workshops with local women. Data were analyzed using grounded theory alongside content analysis, with attention to preserving participants’ voices, expressions, and silences. All names of people and places were changed to guarantee confidentiality.

The central case is Bar La Fuente, run since 1988 by Juana and Pepe, both village natives whose three adult children still help on weekends. The researchers found that although the establishment is publicly known as “Pepe’s bar,” its daily operation depends overwhelmingly on the continuous, multifunctional labour of Juana, her daughters Marta and Clara, her daughter-in-law Janne, and two longtime kitchen employees. The discrepancy between public attribution and actual workload, the authors argue, reveals a gendered moral economy in which women’s contributions are naturalized as “help” or family duty rather than recognized as essential work deserving of rights, recognition, or redistribution.

The kitchen emerges as the study’s most revealing site. When Juana described her cooking to the researchers, she emphasized that everything came from the village itself—the potatoes, the ham, the oil—and that visitors told her the food “tastes like home.” Far from a purely culinary setting, the kitchen operates as a space where food preparation, emotion management, and the negotiation of scarcity converge to produce the atmosphere of closeness that tourists read as authentic rural hospitality. On a Monday morning after a busy weekend, Juana apologized for having only eggs and ham left, yet the gesture of giving what there was reaffirmed an ethic of care rooted in rural moral economies. Scarcity, the authors note, becomes an opportunity to reaffirm generosity and attentiveness, values central to the bar’s reputation.

The researchers describe this as anticipatory and emotional labour. When a table of fourteen booked, Juana began preparing on Thursday, sometimes earlier, “because she doesn’t want anyone to leave disappointment,” as her daughter Clara explained. Drawing on feminist theories of care, particularly Joan Tronto’s ethics of care and Hazel Tucker’s work on the emotional performance of hospitality, the authors show that affective availability—remembering customers’ preferences, adjusting cooking to village rhythms, projecting warmth under pressure—constitutes a core productive asset of the business. From the perspective of social reproduction theory associated with Silvia Federici and Tithi Bhattacharya, this largely unpaid and naturalized labour sustains not just one family bar but the entire tourism model on which the village depends.

Beyond the kitchen, the study documents what the authors call women’s invisible management. Juana described a rhythm with no rest: after serving, preparation for the next day begins immediately, encompassing shopping, cleaning, and organization. Clara, despite holding two other jobs and preparing for competitive exams, manages suppliers, inventories, and coordination, rising at six in the morning and not returning home until after dinner. Marta cancels plans with friends whenever the family needs her, framing the sacrifice as inevitable. The authors connect these patterns to research showing that family businesses rely on women’s unpaid or underpaid labour, producing poorly professionalized management models and heightened vulnerability. Even Janne, a northern European migrant originally hired for peak season, navigates a division of labour in which men gravitate toward financial tasks while women absorb the physical and emotional burden of service.

Crucially, the study does not portray these women as passive victims. Following anthropologists Laura Ahearn and Saba Mahmood, the authors analyze their actions as situated agency—a capacity to act that emerges within, rather than outside of, gendered obligations. Juana’s coordination of household, business, and community, Clara’s logistical command of the supply chain, and even Janne’s humorous direction of her father-in-law all demonstrate judgment, creativity, and decision-making. Yet this agency operates within constraints that limit recognition and authority. The women’s pluriactivity—juggling bar work, domestic duties, emotional mediation, and external employment—intensifies workloads without translating into greater decision-making power, echoing the capability approach of Martha Nussbaum, which asks what people are genuinely able to be and do.

The women’s work also extends into the village square, where emotional availability becomes community care. Juana regularly steps outside during peak hours to check on elderly neighbors, exchange news, or offer help, sustaining a social fabric that tourists interpret as authentic village life. The authors argue that this authenticity is not spontaneous but the product of sustained affective labour, consistent with research showing that community cohesion in post-crisis rural Spain increasingly depends on invisible relational work carried disproportionately by women. Clara’s frustration during a busy weekend captures the tension: the village insists the bar cannot close, tourists expect attention, and the women feel they must be available all the time. The study interprets this as affective overexposure—community expectations and tourism demands intersecting to produce a form of labour that is rarely acknowledged as work at all.

Perhaps most consequential are the generational tensions the study documents. Younger women value the bar as a space of sociability and identity but recognize the personal costs of a model demanding total availability. Clara, who studies so she does not “end up like my mother, always tired, always here,” embodies a refusal to reproduce a limiting model, while her sister’s observation that the village and tourists both expect unlimited service reveals the daily dilemma between continuity and exhaustion. The authors interpret these choices, informed by Rita Segato’s analysis of gendered mandates, as forms of situated resistance: not abrupt rupture but gradual reconfiguration through education, mobility, and reduced involvement. Importantly, tourism strengthens the family economy while simultaneously intensifying workloads and constraining younger women’s ability to integrate the business into their own life projects.

The study’s implications reach beyond one mountain bar. The authors call for rural development and tourism policies that recognize the unequally distributed role of care work, support family businesses through training, professionalization, and work–life balance measures, and design generational renewal strategies that incorporate the aspirations of young women. They caution against approaches that portray women’s entrepreneurship as an automatic pathway to empowerment, revealing instead the structural inequalities on which many family-based tourism enterprises depend. While the analysis rests on a single case at a particular moment, the authors argue that its value lies in illuminating social mechanisms—kinship, care, hospitality, and gender—that operate across contemporary rural tourism. In Monte Verde, as the study’s subtitle suggests, the most important work is the work you cannot see.

Subject of Research: Invisible women's care and emotional labour sustaining family-run rural tourism businesses in Andalusia, Spain

Article Title: Women's work and caregiving in rural tourism in Andalusia (Spain): “You can’t see it, but it’s just as important”

Article References: Women's work and caregiving in rural tourism in Andalusia (Spain): “You can’t see it, but it’s just as important”. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41257-026-00163-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s41257-026-00163-z

Keywords: rural tourism, women's labour, care work, emotional labour, social reproduction, ethnography, Andalusia, family business, gender inequality, generational renewal, hospitality, moral economy