Published Paper Details:

This paper addresses the major issue of Unpaid Empathy and the expectations of compassion being placed mainly on women managers in a hybrid work setting. This is a conceptual study rooted in the Gendered Organizations Theory, Emotional Labor Theory, and the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model. Each is used to build an analytical framework, linking invisible emotional work to managerial strain. The hybrid context is tempered by these integrated frameworks, which create an argument that the hybrid situation is a major source of gender inequality, turning cultural standards into chronic strain. The research synthesizes recent work (2023-2025) on digital ambiguity, proximity bias, and gendered stressors in hybrid leadership. It suggests that the presence of digital ambiguity and the structured need for proximity-bias elimination work together as new, gendered job demands; thus, women managers are pushed into draining activities such as emotional monitoring and social coordination. This Unpaid Empathy is regarded as a major hindrance stressor, which gradually reduces the capability to feel emotion and finally mediates the connection between the hybrid structure and negative psychological consequences. The model offers testable propositions for future quantitative research, emphasizing policy relevance and practical value. The model speculates that this continuous imbalance sets off the burnout process, which directly results in lower job satisfaction, and, at the same time, the "prove-it-again" bias, which causes stagnated career development, gets aggravated. The study identifies this crucial mechanism, thus propelling the generation of indispensable analytical propositions for future quantitative testing and, at the same time, calling for the adoption of gender-sensitive strategies by policymakers and organizations, which formally acknowledge and reward relational work as a prerequisite for equitable organizational functioning.