Gender Difference and Emotional Intelligence in Selected Hospitals - A Study

Emotions in humans are subjective conscious experience characterized by psycho-physiological expressions and behavioral reactions. It may act as tool, if positively identified by complementing and enriching job performance but if negatively understood can ruin feelings and be a disaster. Emotions in healthcare organizations are important to be taken care of because in the service exchange process emotions of both the service provider and the receiver are directly involved. Although caring and curing patient by these employees is a professional activity but still, the empathetic and sympathetic behavior shown by these professionals influences their performance and success in hospital industry. Moreover, the behavior shown by these employees in the workplace is often discriminated on the basis of their gender as it influences the performance of health professionals. Based on above backdrop, the objective of the current study is to assess whether there exist difference in emotional intelligence of healthcare employees in hospitals with respect to their gender. A standardized questionnaire was used to conduct the study among 300 employees in hospitals with the help of scale developed by Hyde, Pethe and Dhar (2002). Data was analyzed through SPSS and results indicated that the level of emotional intelligence among females is higher than male employees.