“Mum's Tennis Day”: The Gendered Definition of Older Women's Leisure

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Abstract A group of older women in Australia provide an understanding of how and under what conditions playing sport for leisure was possible when women's lives were defined by gender-divided domestic and capital relations. The paper is based on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with fifteen white, heterosexual women in Western Australia who had played tennis for an average of 40 years. Working and middle class women were represented. It highlights how domestic labour and childcare were accommodated within the tennis culture by structures and practises which developed from the assumption of this as women's primary work. Furthermore, the nature and profile of their participation in the sport tended to be determined by whether or not their husbands also played. The terms “immersed” and “invisible” are used to describe these two scenarios. Whilst being a motive force in the lives of these women, tennis affirmed rather than challenged dominant gender relations.