“You can call me Susan!” Doing gendered class work in luxury service encounters

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2021-0272
• Published date: 03 June 2022
• Date: 03 June 2022
• Pages: 494-511
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Vanessa Sandra Bernauer,Barbara Sieben,Axel Haunschild

“You can call me Susan!”Doing

gendered class work in luxury

service encounters

Vanessa Sandra Bernauer and Barbara Sieben

Helmut Schmidt University –University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg,

Hamburg, Germany, and

Axel Haunschild

Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

Abstract

Purpose –With a focus on service encounters in the luxury segment of hospitality and tourism, the authors

analyse how inherent social class distinctions and status differences are (re-)produced and which role gender

plays in this process of “doing class”.

Design/methodology/approach –The authors combine concepts of class work and inequality regimes with

a focus on intersections of class and gender. The empirical study is based on interviews in Germany withfirst-

class flight attendants, five-star hotel employees, and luxury customers on how they perceive and legitimize

luxury services, working conditions and status differences.

Findings –The authors identify perceptions and practices of status enhancement and status dissonance

among luxury service workers, as well as gender practices and meanings such as specific feminized roles

service workers take on. The authors also conceptualize these intersecting patterns of inequality reproduction

as “gendered class work”.

Originality/value –The study broadens empirical accounts of labour relations in the service industries. The

concept of organizational class work is extended towards worker–customer interactions. With the concept of

gendered class work, the authors contribute to research on the intersectionality of class and gender and the

reproduction of inequalities.

Keywords Class, Status, Gender, Interactive service work, Luxury services

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Workers in the hospitality and tourism industry face greater job insecurity, exploitation,a ndmore

precarious working conditions than in most other industries (ILO, 2017). Moreover, servicework in

these industries is generally characterised by emotional (Hochschild, 1983) and aesthetic (Witz

et al., 2003) labour. On this basis, social inequalities are produced, reproduced,and intertwined with

gender, age, ethnic background, sexual orientation, physical appearance, and class.

Service work in the luxury sector mirrors the working conditions and exacerbates the

inequalities we find in the hospitality and tourism industry. Luxury services can be found, for

example, in luxury hotels, on cruise ships and in luxury fashion retail. It is a sector where

social status asymmetry is inherent in worker-customer interactions and where “class acts”

(Sherman, 2007): affluent middle- or upper-class customers are served by relatively low-paid

and low-skilled workers and often by women and ethnic minorities. In the luxury service

sector, serving and being served is thus shaped by status differences and inequalities, and the

inherently “classed nature of service work interactions”(Hanser, 2012, p. 294) is not only

prevalent but constitutive.

EDI

42,4

494

The authors would like to sincerely thank the anonymous study participants for sharing their

experiences and stories and enriching this article! The authors are grateful to all the colleagues who

provided inspiring comments at various stages of the article’s journey, as well as the editors and two

anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 18 October 2021

Revised 24 March 2022

Accepted 16 May 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 4, 2023

pp. 494-511

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-10-2021-0272

The role of class differences in organizationsandthewaysinwhichtheyaresocially

constituted and enacted in day-to-day organizational procedures has been addressed in

previous research (Gray and Kish-Gephart, 2013;Scully and Blake-Beard, 2006). While

Gray and Kish-Gephart (2013) focus on cross-class encounters between organizational

members, Sherman’s (2007) analysis of service encounters in luxury hotels is one of the

seminal studies highlighting “the social embeddedness of the customer in status

hierarchies external to the labour process”(Lopez, 2010, p. 256) and the implications for

worker-customer interactions. Focusing on luxury service work, both Hanser (2005) and

Otis (2011,2016) address the intersection of national and socio-political frameworks (in this

case: post-Maoist China) with gendered and classed dispositions. This calls for more

contextualised studies on the constitution of inequality regimes (Acker, 2006) in luxury

service organizations, and on the intersections of related gender and class processes in

society at large.

Class has a structural or objective facet (educational attainment and economic capital), but

also a facet of style and processes (Scully and Blake-Beard, 2006). Hanser (2012) points out

that most studies on (luxury) service work use a class concept that focuses on social status

(differences) rather than class-based stratification. We follow this perspective as it opens our

eyes to status associations beyond objective class (e.g. between luxury workers and other

service workers), to the way class inequalities are related to gendered status hierarchies, and

to the way such inequality regimes are perceived and reproduced.

The aim of this article is to analyse how social class distinctions and status differences are

(re-)produced in the context of luxury service work and what role gender plays in this process

of “doing class”. Our study is based on empirical accounts from first-class service in the

airline industry and five-star hotels in Germany. We conducted interviews with first-class

flight attendants, five-star hotel employees, and luxury customers on how they perceive and

legitimise luxury services, working conditions, and status differences, and how they perceive

and reflect luxury service encounters.

The perspectives presented, (1) class work and inequality regimes in organizations and

(2) the intersection and social embeddedness of class and gender inequalities in (luxury)

service work, provide useful and sensitising concepts for our analysis. We combine and

extend these perspectives by focusing on class work not only within organizations but also

in luxury service encounters and by systematically analysing how the reproduction of

status differences is related to gender practices of status-related self-perception, identity-

formation, and legitimization. We also contribute to studies on (luxury) service work by

examining service work in luxury hotels and first-class airline services in a European

context.

The article is structured as follows. First, we draw on empirical accounts of luxury service

work to explicate how key requirements such as emotional and aesthetic labour contribute to

its classed and gendered nature. Against this background, we introduce sensitising concepts

for our analysis of gendered class dynamics. We then present the methods and findings of our

qualitative study into such dynamics in first-class service in the airline industry and five-star

hotels. In the discussion, we propose a grounded model of the reproduction of inequalities

through gendered class work that integrates our empirical findings. Finally, we summarise

our analysis, point out our research contribution and identify open questions for future

research.

Luxury service work

With the notion of luxury work, we focus on a particular type of person-related service work

that is performed in direct face-to-face interaction. Specifically, we look at a particular sector

of the service industry in which high-priced leisure and similar services are provided through

Doing

gendered class

work

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