One Size Doesn't Fit All: The Meanings of Women's Leisure

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Researchers who study women's leisure in the 1990s are moving into a discourse about the inability and inadequacy of determining that leisure is the same for all women or that leisure size fits The purpose of this paper is to extend an integrative review undertaken in 1990 to ascertain what we know about women's leisure in 1996. An integrative review was the strategy for reviewing research that focused on inferring generalizations about substantive issues from a set of studies directly bearing on these issues. The analyses resulted in three themes grounded in the literature of the past six years along with guiding hypotheses developed within each theme. The megathemes included gender, continua of meanings, and diversity. KEYWORDS: women, gender; feminism, diversity, meanings, leisure, social change Introduction Until 15 years ago, women's leisure was an invisible area of study relatively devoid of theory. Attempts to make generalizations about the common world of women with a focus on understanding the social psychological of women's leisure in a one size fits all approach have been the focus of the past decade. These attempts at generating universal understandings have been a necessary, but insufficient, step for understanding leisure behavior. The research about feminism and women's leisure in the 1990s is now moving into a discourse about the inability and inadequacy of determining that one leisure size fits all. As Dustin (1992) suggested, we must return to the same starting point if we are to begin anew our quest for a greater understanding. The new quest, however, has shifted from to regarding women's leisure. This shift also parallels the role of the new wave of thinking about feminism from totalizing and universalizing women's experiences to seeing the need for many feminisms (Henderson, Bialeschki, Shaw, & Freysinger, 1996). The purpose of this paper is to extend the integrative review undertaken in 1990 (Henderson, 1990a) to ascertain what is known about women's leisure in 1996. In this earlier review, the stated purpose was to synthesize the literature to explore the complex interrelationships and dimensions of women's lives. I concluded that frameworks for understanding women's leisure were emerging, a variety of methods were being used, and possibilities existed for empowering women through continued leisure research (Henderson, 1990a). Further, I suggested that a was emerging (i.e., women share a common world in their inequality in leisure when compared to male privilege, social interactions represent a common focus of women's leisure, women tend to use the home and nonstructured activities as the primary place and means for leisure expression, much of women's leisure is fragmented, and many women do not feel they are entitled to leisure). The reality is that a single meaning has not manifested itself in the past six years, as will be shown in this updated integrative review. Rather, numerous meanings have arisen based on the life situations of women and the changing nature of the understanding of gender and leisure. Background: Finding the Right Fit In the past few years, researchers have constructed a body of knowledge about women's leisure. We have begun to move from using gender as a variable to making it a central theoretical concept. The main North American concerns, as well as those of other Western countries, have been in exploring women's experiences of leisure within the context of women's lives (Yule, 1992). For example, we have learned about social psychological ideas such as the ethic of caring (e.g., Gilligan, 1982) that drives many of the decisions about what women do with their free time (e.g., Henderson & Allen, 1991; Harrington, Dawson, & Bolla, 1992). Scraton (1994) suggested that studies done in Britain (e.g., Deem, 1986; Green, Hebron, & Woodward, 1987) about women's leisure have resulted in structural analyses such as problematizing the definition of leisure and situating leisure within the holistic context of women's lives. …