Discover the Best Books Written by Gemma Hartley
Gemma Hartley is an American author and journalist best known for a viral article in Harper's Bazaar on emotional labor and her subsequent book Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward (HarperCollins, 2018). In 2017, Hartley wrote an article for Harper's Bazaar entitled "Women Aren't Nags—We're Just Fed Up," about the struggles women in heterosexual relationships face in trying to divide household labor equitably, including both the visible labor and the invisible mental labor that women end up doing much more of.
The article went viral, earning millions of views and social media shares, bringing forward the subject of emotional labor that women disproportionally bear and sparking a national conversation on gender inequality. The attention the article gained created interest from book publishers, and Hartley got a book deal to expand the concept.
In 2018, HarperCollins published Hartley's book Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. In Fed Up, Hartley highlights the many ways women carry unequal labor burdens within the household, both seen and unseen, and offers solutions for having productive conversations to equalize that labor.
Hartley describes emotional labor as a cultural problem that's taught to all of us at a young age and deeply ingrained, and it must therefore be addressed that way, as a cultural problem we must unlearn. Fed Up offers solutions for avoiding gender inequality and undue emotional labor for women in the workplace.
Fed Up has been compared to Soraya Chemaly's book Rage Becomes Her, Rebecca Traister's Good and Mad, and other books focused on women's anger over various aspects of gender inequality. Aside from emotional labor, Hartley also writes extensively about feminism, the challenges of motherhood, and work culture.