\n<\/p>\n
R<\/span>achel Reeves\u2019s tears this week triggered a fall in the pound and attracted widespread derision from political columnists, mostly male. \u201cWhat is wrong with Rachel Reeves?\u201d the Telegraph asked. In an article headlined \u201cThe meaning of the chancellor\u2019s tears\u201d, a New Statesman columnist told readers that Reeves\u2019s authority was \u201cbeginning to melt away\u201d. The Daily Mail spoke disdainfully of her \u201cwaterworks\u201d.<\/p>\n But in the longer term the chancellor\u2019s display of distress may prove to have an unexpectedly positive legacy, helpfully normalising a still hugely stigmatised phenomenon: women\u2019s tears in the workplace.<\/p>\n Until now, tearful outbursts at work have mostly been mired in shame, the source of acute embarrassment. This week\u2019s live broadcast of the chancellor\u2019s silent tears could help shift the taboo, highlighting a little-discussed truth: sometimes women cry at work, and it\u2019s no big deal.<\/p>\n Reeves reflected on her own tears with a shrug a day later. \u201cPeople saw I was upset, but that was yesterday. Today\u2019s a new day and I\u2019m just cracking on with the job,\u201d she said on Thursday. She declined to explain what had prompted her distress, describing it simply as a personal issue and refusing to go into details. Within 24 hours the markets had bounced back with the assurances of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, that she would remain in her job for the long term.<\/p>\n Clearly it is far from ideal to be filmed in tears during the week\u2019s most-watched exchanges in the House of Commons, but ministerial jobs are immensely tough. Some of Reeves\u2019s male predecessors have exhibited the strain of their roles in more extreme ways, while attracting less attention, because their behaviour is classed as routine and acceptable machismo.<\/p>\n When Britain\u2019s former prime minister Gordon Brown was exhausted and under pressure he was known to be prone to volcanic eruptions. One biographer described how Brown would stab the seat of the ministerial Jaguar with his pen in fury. Bloomberg reported that a new aide was warned to watch out for \u201cflying Nokias\u201d when he joined Brown\u2019s team (although a spokesperson for Brown said at the time that this was \u201cnot an account that I recognise\u201d).<\/p>\n Reeves\u2019s tears were widely seen as a sign that she was losing control. Brown\u2019s fury was forgiven by many as just a regrettable quirk displayed by a leader under pressure.<\/p>\n <\/span>Theresa May\u2019s voice cracked as she delivered her speech announcing her resignation as prime minister in May 2019.<\/span> Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Research consistently confirms what we instinctively know: that women cry more frequently than men. So it stands to reason that as we see more women in senior leadership roles, the sight of a powerful woman in tears should become less remarkable. It would be odd to celebrate it, since it\u2019s an exhausting and often mortifying phenomenon, but Reeves\u2019s outburst may help it to be better understood as simply a different way of expressing professional frustration or responding to pressure.<\/p>\n Polling conducted by YouGov in the UK revealed that 34% of men claimed not to have cried at all in the previous year, compared with only 7% of women; 18% of women said they cried at least once a week, compared with only 4% of men. Behaviour varies between cultures, but this remains a broadly global phenomenon: a 2011 study of 5,715 participants from 37 countries found women were more prone to crying and were more likely to have cried recently.<\/p>\n <\/span>Margaret Thatcher cried as she left 10 Downing Street for the last time as prime minister in 1990.<\/span> Photograph: Ken Lennox\/Alamy<\/p>\n This week, Germany\u2019s former leader Angela Merkel revealed that she \u201cburst out crying from the pressure\u201d during a meeting with the then US president, Barack Obama, on how to handle Greece\u2019s mounting debt crisis in 2015. Theresa May was on the brink of tears when she stepped down as the UK prime minister in May 2019, her voice cracking and lips wobbling as she stood outside Downing Street, telling assembled journalists that it had been the honour of her life \u201cto serve the country I love\u201d. Margaret Thatcher was in tears when she was driven from Downing Street in 1990. By contrast, David Cameron hummed his way back inside No 10 after his resignation speech in 2016.<\/p>\n Obama wept occasionally when president, but these were mostly dignified occasions, prompted by the memory of tragic events, such as the shooting of schoolchildren during a speech about gun control. His tears were not the unattractive and uncontrollable, messy and humiliating variety, but were mostly seen as commendable expressions of his humanity. Vladimir Putin appeared emotional a decade ago during a soft-rock song honouring the bravery of the Russian police force, but these too were a different kind of tears.<\/p>\n Political behaviour in Britain has been slow to change, despite the rapidly evolving makeup of the Commons. In 2024, the UK elected the highest number of female MPs ever. There are now 264 women in the Commons, holding 41% of the 650 seats. Since the 1997 election of the Labour party saw the proportion of women double from 9% to 18%, there has been a steady rise,<\/p>\n but the institution\u2019s combative culture has barely changed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had years of men shouting, scoffing, braying, even sleeping in this chamber, so we shouldn\u2019t overreact to a woman showing her frustration with one tear,\u201d said Penny East, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, a feminist campaigning charity. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be interpreted as a sign that she\u2019s not up to her job. These criticisms feel riddled with sexism and stereotype.\u201d<\/p>\n Ask any female colleague, and they will probably reluctantly admit to having wrestled with the challenge of holding back tears at work, often prompted by professional frustration rather than sadness. I\u2019ve done it, during a difficult conversation with an editor, raising my eyes to the ceiling and tilting my head back, hoping that gravity would somehow suck the tears back inside the ducts and that no one would notice.<\/p>\n Women know it can be damaging professionally because crying remains categorised as a sign of incompetence and weakness, an unacceptable manifestation of stress. One accomplished acquaintance in a senior role was unfairly nicknamed Tiny Tears in private by her staff because occasionally she responded to challenging situations with involuntary tears. Her colleagues were less familiar with this manifestation of professional dissatisfaction than they might have been with a display of male anger.<\/p>\n <\/span>Barack Obama publicly cried on a number of occasions, including during his farewell address as US president, but his tears were mostly seen as commendable expressions of his humanity and not weakness.<\/span> Photograph: Kamil Krzaczy\u0144ski\/EPA<\/p>\n Another woman described crying on her third day at her new job as a chief executive of a large organisation. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t live on the media, but it was in an open-plan office and I was surrounded by senior and junior staff. I\u2019m not remotely comparing my job to the job of the chancellor, but there was a huge burden of responsibility and I was having to take difficult decisions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She was embarrassed by her own tears because she could see how uncomfortable it made her team. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t see it as a loss of control. We shouldn\u2019t assume that displays of emotions represent a loss of control over ability to do your job.\u201d She thinks, however, the episode may unexpectedly have helped her win colleagues\u2019 respect. \u201cThey could see I really cared about what we were there to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Although there is no difference in the amount male and female babies cry, women cry more frequently than men because of a complex mix of social conditioning and biology. Ad Vingerhoets, a professor of clinical psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has studied the science of tears, and notes that testosterone acts as a \u201cbrake\u201d on the crying response.<\/p>\n Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, who specialises in analysing how emotions are expressed through laughter and tears, said: \u201cHow we experience and express our emotions is influenced by our biology and by how we\u2019ve grown up.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott made a distinction between tears produced as a result of sadness and tears triggered by anger, noting that these tears of frustration and fury seemed to be more frequently something experienced by women. \u201cIf you\u2019re angry and you feel you can\u2019t do something about it, there\u2019s a helpless, frustrated feeling that pushes you to tears,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Women seemed to find themselves more frequently fighting tears of frustration than men, Scott said, adding that this might be because \u201cangry and more aggressive responses are more acceptable in men\u201d.<\/p>\n Unusually, Reeves\u2019s misery was caught playing out over the 30-minute duration of the prime minister\u2019s questions session, allowing viewers a rare and uncomfortable view of someone attempting and failing to stem the flow, lips twitching and turning downwards. \u201cA big difference between my job and many of your viewers\u2019 is that when I\u2019m having a tough day it\u2019s on the telly, and most people don\u2019t have to deal with that,\u201d Reeves told the BBC.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018Today\u2019s a new day and I\u2019m just cracking on with the job,\u2019 said Rachel Reeves, after she was seen crying in the Commons the day before.<\/span> Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n Scott said many forms of tears were hard to control, adding: \u201cCrying is a very truthful signal. Once it gets hold of you, it\u2019s very hard to stop it. It\u2019s involuntary.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosie Campbell, a professor of politics at King\u2019s College London, said she was staggered by the negativity triggered by Reeves\u2019s tears. \u201cIn our society, women are more likely to cry. That doesn\u2019t make them worse leaders,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to see politicians crying in the chamber every day, but if it happens a couple of times in a parliamentary career, that should be no big deal.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m more worried about emotionally repressed leaders than about someone who realises that the financial security of the nation is in their hands and they feel the weight of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rachel Reeves\u2019s tears this week triggered a fall in the pound and attracted widespread derision from political columnists, mostly male. \u201cWhat is wrong with Rachel Reeves?\u201d the Telegraph asked. In an article headlined \u201cThe meaning of the chancellor\u2019s tears\u201d, a New Statesman columnist told readers that Reeves\u2019s authority was \u201cbeginning to melt away\u201d. The Daily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[785,2652,2655,2656,2654,2653,1019,1214,1296],"class_list":{"0":"post-9956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-commons","9":"tag-crying","10":"tag-rachel","11":"tag-reeves","12":"tag-shame","13":"tag-source","14":"tag-tears","15":"tag-womens","16":"tag-workplace"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}